The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.'
Interpretation
The quote expresses the artist's repulsion towards conventional food and her dedication to creating art as a form of expression.
Yayoi Kusama articulates her disdain for the mechanical and artificial nature of processed food, specifically macaroni, which symbolizes a lack of authenticity and creativity. In response, she turns to art, creating macaroni sculptures as a way to confront her fears and revulsion. The process of making these sculptures becomes a form of catharsis for her, leading to what she defines as 'obliteration'—a complete immersion in her artistic process that allows her to escape the conventional and embrace her unique vision.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of creativity in overcoming fears, one might reference Kusama's quote.
A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement... Polka-dots are a way to infinity.
When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day.
It doesn't matter at all for me that I work in hospital or anywhere with limited space. Every day, I'm creating new works with all my might.
You should create a work that is so valuable it might eventually sell at a high price, but you've got to concentrate on how you create that artwork.
The hardest thing with musicians is getting them not to play.
It skims in through the eye, and by means of the utterly delicate retina hurls shadows like insect legs inward for translation. Then an immense space opens up in silence and an endlessly fecund sub-universe the writer descends, and asks the reader to descend after him, not merely to gain instructions but also to experience delight, the delight of mind freed from matter and exultant in the strength it has stolen from matter.
Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.
I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!
The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain indebtedness and duty toward it because I have walked this earth for thirty years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures — not made to please a certain taste in art, but to express a sincere human feeling.
Those with prodigious skill in music are better suited for all things.
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