Primarily recognised as a visual artist, Yayoi Kusama has also produced myriad works as a writer, filmmaker and fashion designer. In 1948, Kusama began her studies in traditional Japanese painting and subsequently pursued performance upon moving to New York in 1957. Later, she expanded into sculpture, printmaking, photography and installation. Her preoccupations with perception, infinitude and oblivion are evidenced in her use of repetitive patterned dots. In Splendor of Life That Lasts Till It Burns Out (2009), portraits painted in red, blue, purple and black are layered in a manner whereby faces, and the spaces between them, are interrupted with black dots. Upon closer inspection, the dots resemble black holes, portals or burns, suggestive of concepts such as an alter-ego, multiplicity and infinite speculative possibility.