Sex Obsession

The works Sex Obsession and Untitled are part of the artist’s series Accumulations, consisting of furniture, clothing and other objects from which phallic shapes proliferate. Kusama has been creating these sculptures since 1963. The works symbolize her fear of sex and male dominance. As a child, her mother forced her to spy on her father, a notorious cheater. Kusama thus unwittingly became a witness to his extramarital affairs. She processed her ensuing fears in the Accumulations, which she later referred to more specifically as Phalluses.
For the series, Kusama sews small bags out of linen, which she fills with cotton and wool and then covers them with plaster paint to stiffen them. The artist learned the employed sewing technique when she had to sew parachutes in a military factory in Japan during the Second World War.
Sex Obsession (1976) consists of an ordinary shirt on a coat hanger, the front of which is completely covered, up to the collar, with different sized green painted phalluses. In some spots one sees a touch of shimmering silver spray paint. The coloring also makes the phalluses resemble moss or lichen growing over the shirt.