Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors

Kusama's work is innovative and visually stunning, the immersive rooms of Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors in particular creating illusions of vast magical landscapes inside spaces often the size of a bathroom or closet.

My husband scored timed tickets to the blockbuster Infinity Mirrors exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, and for someone who loves recursion, it did not disappoint.

The individual tableaux range from intergalactic to Alice-in-Wonderland-style weird. My personal favorite, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, which is also Kusama's most recent and on view for the first time at the Hirshhorn, fell somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. This room is a total fusion of recursion, innovation, mythology, and glamour; it felt like stepping into an infinite futuristic fairytale dreamscape.

• Yayoi Kusama, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, 2016

I'm not surprised Infinity Mirrors has become crushingly popular—popular to the point that one of my friends teased I was "so basic" for going.

For such a photogenic exhibit, photographs don't do it justice. It's interactive and mass-customizable, selfie-friendly, and endlessly Instagrammable, snuggling perfectly into the sociocultural mores of the moment.

I was fortunate to go on a Wednesday morning when the crowds weren't too bad, but the overall buzz surrounding this exhibition reminds me a lot of the 2011 Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty mania I experienced intimately when I worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The glamour of the Kusama show has likewise transcended its inherent glamour. The more people wait in line, the more people are willing to wait in line. The line has become part of the attraction, not just a means of getting inside to see.

A version of this work originally appeared as Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors.