YAYOI KUSAMA’S art invariably prompts discussion about drugs, particularly because she paints spots, which cover the surfaces of her soft sculptures and paintings like an intense acid trip. But these artworks are in fact inspired by a series of hallucinations the artist experienced as a child growing up in Japan in the 1930s. In the 1950s Kusama moved to New York where she hung out at Andy Warhol’s Factory, and became intimately involved with Joseph Cornell, whom she referred to as her “lover”. Kusama’s work is broad ranging, but she is best known for her canvases with obsessive, sometimes manic patterns. These images are almost frightening, yet Kusama’s art is vibrant, funny and life-affirming. She also combines her trademark canary yellows and pillar-box reds with black dots in soft, amorphous sculptural installations. All these works combine to create Kusama World, a terrific, terrifying wonderland.

Your name has been immortalised in a song – Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama) by Superchunk. Does this please you? I am delighted. I think it is his homage to my art, and I am grateful.

Do you listen to music while you work? I do not listen to music at all while I am working on art pieces. Even the voices of people conversing with each other near me are a nuisance. I want to concentrate on creating artworks without being distracted by unnecessary thoughts.

Are your drawings spontaneous or do you have a specific image in mind before you begin? Before starting on my drawings, I have no specific image in mind. I never conceive any ideas beforehand. My hands move rapidly by themselves and spread an image all over a canvas. When a drawing is thus completed, I realise that it is exactly what I wanted to draw, and am moved by this process of creation. Then I decide on a title for the work.

There are a lot of eyes in your drawings. What do you find interesting about them? Eyes express one’s emotions. They impart one’s state of mind to beholders. People connect with the outside world through their eyes. Proliferated eyes in my drawings are deeply embedded in my artistic creativity. Eyes add interesting features to paintings and sculptures.

Do the faces represent you? Yes, they do. I am also incorporating a large number of lips, noses and ears as motifs in my work, and my philosophies are born out of them.

What was the inspiration behind 1994’s Infinity Mirrored Room – Love Forever? The eternally shining Love Forever has always been the basis for my pursuit of truth. I sincerely wanted to sing out a “hymn of life”. Since the early 1960s I have created works using new media such as electric bulbs and mirrors, among others. And I have incorporated them into my nudist events and happenings, such as Kusama’s Self-Obliteration [1967].

You have worked a lot with mirrors – what is their significance? Mirrors infinitely and vividly multiply images. The magical effect the mirrors create causes confusion in the mind of viewers.

You often require the viewer to become part of the artwork. Is this because you want them to experience the world as you see it? I wanted to make an appeal, with my process of the pursuit of truth, to the people of the world. With my art, I want to make my thoughts, philosophies and lifelong messages shine to reach the ends of the universe. With this determination, I have been running with all my strength towards that goal.

Many of your installations have a playful quality: how important is it that people get pleasure from your art? I want to convey to people the messages of my art, which I have committed all my life to. I want to share with them the joy of creation. To this end, I have been consistently seeking the truth as an artist, and I will continue to do so throughout my life.

You are sometimes described as a psychedelic artist. Do you like this? The processes and ways of my art have been given various names by the viewers according to their own interpretations. The themes under which I have created works include Driving Image, Psychosomatic Art, Psychedelic Art, Stereotypical Repetition, Accumulation Art, Obsessional Art, and others.