In the manner of Yayoi Kusama
Japanese, b. 1929
The Queue, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
162 × 162 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.23.5
Moving, 16-second loop ·
Black silhouettes covered in yellow dots stand in single file, all facing the same way, and the queue curves up and away into a dotted figure of eight: the sign for infinity. The ground under them is pink with red dots. The queues outside Kusama's infinity rooms last for hours. This is the queue with the room taken away. Nobody in it has noticed the difference.
The brief
A long queue of simplified figures covered in black and yellow dots, all facing the same direction, the queue curving into a dotted infinity. Contemporary painting of obsessive repeated dots and nets, dense polka dots in graduated sizes covering every surface, red on white, yellow on black, undulating net patterns, hallucinatory flatness, the object dissolving into pattern, thick even acrylic with hand-painted irregularity. Museum photograph of the acrylic painting, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
