What’s great about modern art is not only its ability to open up your inner creativity but also its way of bringing back memories from the past. Looking at Yayoi Kusama’s ”Obliteration Room,” (photo above) I was immediately a child again. Spring break, 2002, I vividly remember waking up early to go to the Oregon Zoo. As a 7 year old, I have to admit I was quite frightened of animals, especially birds. Throughout the two-hour car ride from Corvallis, I was skeptical about what I would encounter that day. Would the animals chase me? Are the birds going to snatch me with their beaks and carry me away? These questions were constantly running through my mind and I distinctly remember my parents saying, ”Don’t worry Bethel, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.” We arrived at the zoo a few minutes before they opened so we decided to walk around Portland for a while. I always adored the skyscrapers with hundreds of windows and wondered why Corvallis didn’t have any. I especially loved the ”Portland Oregon” sign that is in the shape of Oregon and contains a reindeer running across it.

After our short walk, we entered the zoo and got on a small bus that drove us around all of the animal stations. We saw elephants, monkeys, tigers, cheetahs, eagles, ducks and my favorite, (which I still find extraordinary) the Australian walking stick. At around 12, my stomach was making more noise than the elephants so we thought it would be a good time to try the famous zoo burger. Normally, I don’t eat dessert when we go to restaurants but this time –since we were on vacation– my parents insisted that I eat ice cream. How could I decline such a scrumptious offer? To this day, I have never seen such a beautiful ice cream cone. It was covered in sprinkles to the point that nearly no ice cream was visible. I had never seen anything so beautiful and so colorful in my life. I was hesitant to devour the admirable treat but I couldn’t just let it go to waste either. That ice cream cone was a memorable part of my childhood and looking at Yayoi Kusama’s ”Obliteration Room” reminded me of that day at the zoo. It depicts a white room engulfed in droplets of bright colored paint similar to my ice cream cone. The circular shaped dots on the floor and walls of the room are identical to the circular sprinkles on my dessert thus that’s how I was able to connect the two. In the picture, it is evident that there is a little kid playing a piano and it’s quite interesting that the little kid has no paint on his shirt. Everything in the room contains yellow, red, blue, green and orange paint, but the kid is completely clean from head to toe. Even though everything is painted, you can still see the windows to the right of the little kid, the two picture frames on top of the piano, and the floor trim which lines the entire room. Likewise, on my ice cream cone, you could still see some of the ice cream hiding under the layer of sprinkles and the entire cone.

The ”Obliteration Room” is currently my favorite piece of modern art. I admire the fact that it was able to bring back such a precious memory of my childhood and like the ice cream cone, the brightness of it is just so appealing to my eyes.