Yayoi Kusama: You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies

An installation at Phoenix Art Museum since 2005, Yayoi Kusama’s You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies is one of the artist's more whimsical works. Inspired by a Japanese folk tale about a person in a field with 10,000 fireflies, Kusama's work brings the fairy tale to life.

The piece is a dark room lined with mirrors on every surface and strands of looping LED lighting suspended from the ceiling. This deceptively small room feels as if it’s a vast, infinite galaxy of lighting and allows the viewer to enter and be surrounded, or obliterated by Kusama’s fireflies.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.