“Rockaway! 2018: Narcissus Garden by Yayoi Kusama”

Hints of Kusama’s famed “Infinity Rooms” can be found in her centerpiece installation for the third edition of MoMA PS1’s arts festival in the Rockaways. Consisting of 1,500 mirrored stainless steel spheres laid on the ground like a clutch of eggs, Narcissus Garden was originally shown as an unofficial entry in the 1966 Venice Biennale (installed, without permission, on the lawn of the Italian Pavilion); in it, Kusama tossed the spheres in the air and sold them to passersby for $2 a pop. The piece marked a phase of Kusama’s career during the late ’60 in which she mounted a series of often-controversial public interventions that were part guerrilla action and part self-promotional stunt. Since then, Narcissus Garden has been mounted a number of times, with this version housed in a former train garage on the grounds of the decommissioned military base at Fort Tilden.