Walking into the exhibition hall, I'm immediately struck by Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Mirrored Room - The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away." The space transforms into something beyond comprehension—thousands of LED lights suspended in perfect darkness, reflected infinitely by mirrored walls. Standing inside feels like floating in deep space, each pinpoint of light a distant star, the mirrors creating an endless cosmos that extends in every direction.

What makes Kusama's work so powerful isn't just the visual spectacle, though that alone could sustain contemplation for hours. It's how she uses repetition and infinity to explore profound questions about existence, consciousness, and our place in the universe. Her obsessive patterns—the dots that have defined her work for decades—create spaces where the boundary between self and cosmos dissolves. You become part of the installation, your reflection multiplying into infinity alongside the lights.

This piece connects to her lifelong experience with hallucinations and mental health challenges. Rather than suppressing these visions, she's channeled them into art that allows others to step inside her perspective. The polka dots she's covered everything with since childhood aren't just aesthetic choices—they're how she processes overwhelming sensory experience, finding order and beauty in repetition.

Standing in that mirrored room for my allotted sixty seconds (these installations are too popular to allow longer visits), I understand why people queue for hours. It's not Instagram spectacle, though it photographs beautifully. It's the rare experience of art that genuinely alters your perception, that makes you feel simultaneously infinite and insignificant, alone and connected to everything.

Kusama's work reminds me why visual art matters in ways music sometimes can't achieve. Music unfolds in time; you experience it sequentially. But installation art like this creates a moment outside time, a space you inhabit physically and mentally. The experience stays with you—I still feel that sense of floating in infinite space when I close my eyes.

Contemporary art often gets dismissed as inaccessible or pretentious, but Kusama's installations prove how democratic great art can be. You don't need art history knowledge to feel the impact. Children react as powerfully as adults. The experience is immediate and visceral.

For anyone near a Kusama exhibition: go. Stand in those mirrored rooms. Let yourself be disoriented and amazed. Experience what happens when an artist's inner vision becomes a space you can walk into and inhabit. #art #contemporaryart #YayoiKusama #installation