Installation art

• Installation Art


  The use of sculptural materials and other interesting materials to transform a space or an area
• Installation Art is not necessarily confined to gallery spaces and can be any material intervention in everyday public or private spaces
• Installation Art


  • Not a self-contained arrangement of form, but envelops the viewer in the space of the work
  • Provides the visitor with a multi-sensory experience
  • Highly imaginative in that it brings several different materials together to create something original and unexpected
• Installation Art style was popularized when artists began creating Assemblages and Happenings as a rejection of traditional, commodified art practice


  1960s
• Artists as far back as the early twentieth century began experimenting with art as an environment, with the emergence of Dada and Surrealism came a rejection of bourgeois values and the capital placed on works of art, with the emphasis on experience and ideas
• Early Installation Art pioneers

  • Kurt Schwitters "Merzbau"
  • Marcel Duchamp "Mile of String"
• Installation Art vs Sculpture

  Installations often envelop the viewer in the space of the work, while sculpture is designed to be viewed from the outside as a self-contained arrangement of form
• Installation Art is a complete unified experience, rather than a display of separate, individual artworks
• Installation Art

  • Non-collectible - patrons don't usually have the ability to purchase due to the works' size, scope, and uniqueness or significance
  • Large in scale - created to be site-specific in locations like rehabbed warehouses, large rooms in a gallery space or museum, or even in a public art space
• Installation Art from different Artists

  • Anish Kapoor "Cloud Gate"
  • Doris Salcedo "Noviembre 6 y 7"
  • Kara Walker "The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven"
• Yayoi Kusama


  Japanese artist sometimes called 'the princess of polka dots', creates paintings, sculptures, performances, and installations with polka dots as a motif
• Yayoi Kusama had a hallucination as a child of a field of flowers with dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing or 'self-obliterating' into this field of endless dots
• Yayoi Kusama: '"Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment"'
• Yayoi Kusama's Installation Art

  • Dots Obsession
  • Infinity Mirror Room
  • Obliteration Room