“The Obliteration Room” is an interactive art project by Japanese avant-garde artist, Yayoi Kusama. At the start of this installation, Kusama sets up a gallery space filled with typical furniture and ornamentation all painted white. Over several days, people were invited to place multi-colored polka dot stickers of different sizes in any way they want around the room.

Perhaps the deepest need we have as humans is to exert control. Look around and we will see that a substantial amount of our everyday activity is related to attaining a much-needed power over our life. We grow up thinking that if we follow a specific formula - getting a good education, choosing the right career, and getting a fixed mortgage - we will live a fulfilled life. However, when life does not go according to our perfectly laid out plans, self-doubt arises in all of us. We experience a strong and uneasy frustration from a lack of control. We live in a mistake phobic society and no matter how often we are told that flaws are okay and “life” just happens ...we still fall in a deep hole of doubt and fear. We fear the unknown, the unpredictable and, most of all, we fear failure: a dead end job, poor health or the inability to support a family. What we do not realize and refuse to accept is that we have a lot less control than we may think. We believe we can control the future but we can barely predict a day in our lives much less control the constant chaos around us. Yayoi Kusama's interactive art project, "The Obliteration Room" illustrates to us that beauty in a person, life and even a work of art comes forth by not trying so hard to achieve this unreachable universal ideal. The key is to accept the uncertainty of life and move forward; that even if society were orderly, it would not be as captivating as a world of chaos.
At the beginning of “The Obliteration Room” we see a dormant living room painted completely white: white ceilings, white furniture, white floor. This initial white room reflects the human experience we all have and aspire to have: a harmonious life that is pure and non-threatening. We like to plan our lives to be this way... clean, sterile, and fixated like the tables, couches, and bookshelves firmly placed, unable to move. We have these set ideas of the dreams and goals we believe lead to success, happiness and what we imagine as the ideal existence - a life lived in perfect harmony and order. The space is ornamented in the same manner, logically and rationally; the objects sit neatly and stagnant on the shelves and the couches are logically placed faced to face with a table measured exactly in the center. We believe the power over how we strategize about colleges, careers, relationships and so forth will guarantee the life we want. However, we cannot predict the future with any kind of certainty. This perfect life we try so desperately to obtain based on formulated plans and assumptions is an appealing illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. In fact, our constant fear and need for control sucks the life out of us, leaving us more stressed and paralyzed like this initial dull and mundane gallery space.