infinity and beyond

since moving to new york i have really enjoyed making semi-annual weekend trips to washington DC. it is always so much fun to visit my friend emily there and to experience the art and culture and (most of all) food of another city. i love DC and hope to never stop making these frequent visits.

it's our tradition to eat brunch and beignets at founding farmers, which is so delicious every time. emily and i kicked off our saturday there and then headed to the hirshhorn museum, where we had tickets for the yayoi kusama retrospective. you have probably seen photos of kusama's infinity mirror rooms on instagram. i looooove kusama. if you're unfamiliar, here is her fascinating wikipedia page. she is an 88-year-old japanese artist with an incredibly varied and impressive almost-70-year career. her early work in the abstract expressionist, pop art, and performance art movements was very influential to artists including andy warhol and yoko ono. her more contemporary work uses color and pattern in sculpture and installation pieces that are very joyful, whimsical, and even psychedelic. she has become very well-known for her infinity mirrored rooms that are beautiful and transcendent to experience in person.

yayoi kusama: infinity mirrors is a retrospective of her work and includes six of these infinity rooms. it was probably the most fun art exhibition i have ever attended. i couldn't stop smiling the entire time. i studied kusama in my modern art and feminist art classes at BYU and had wanted to see her work in person for years, so i really savored the experience. you only get about 30 seconds inside the mirror rooms, but stepping inside is unlike anything i've ever experienced. it was such a treat to be there. i love that kusama frequently uses pumpkins as a motif in her works (the pumpkin room is called "all the eternal love i have for the pumpkins" and all the titles of her artworks are really endearing). the use of pumpkins was inspired by her family's farming heritage and i love that because i have a family heritage of pumpkin farming. so cute. the last room of the exhibit is called the "obliteration room" and when you enter you are given a sheet of dot stickers that you can place anywhere you like. the room and its furnishings started out completely white and become obliterated by dots and color. i loved it. if you have a chance to go before the exhibit ends mid-may, do it!

after the hirshhorn, we went to see beauty & the beast at the charming uptown theater. for dinner we ate at medium rare, which is a prix fixe steak and frites restaurant we'd both wanted to try for a while. oh em gee, it was amazing. any place where you eat your giant plate of steak and french fries and they come fill it up with more steak and fries? OKAY BY ME. on sunday, we went to church and then i met up with my new friend melissa for tacos at district taco. that place is so tasty and and it was really fun to make an internet friend a real-life friend. as always, the weekend went by way too fast, but it was pretty much perfect. thanks for the memories, DC! i'm a big fan.