This Filipino couple has one of the biggest private collections of Yayoi Kusama’s art
- Filipino couple Lito and Kim Camacho are passionate collectors of Yayoi Kusama's art, having built a collection of over 100 pieces since their first encounter with her work in 2004.
- Their collection has been showcased internationally, including a significant exhibition at the National Gallery Victoria in Melbourne, where they loaned nine pieces, attracting over half a million visitors.
- The couple's admiration for Kusama extends beyond collecting; they have met her in person and expressed their desire to hold a major retrospective of her works in the future.
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MANILA, Philippines – Filipino couple Lito and Kim Camacho are among the world’s ardent collectors of the late Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama (who died on August 14), with dozens of pieces in their home in an exclusive village in Makati City.
Lito was a former finance secretary during the early years of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. When Newsbreak magazine interviewed his wife Kim in 2002, she was then the country manager and representative for Sotheby’s, one of the world’s biggest auction houses for art and real estate. At the time, they were not yet collectors of Kusama’s works.
The Camachos have such a wide collection that they’ve been invited to display some of Kusama’s works in special exhibits abroad. For instance, they loaned nine of their pieces for the Yayoi Kusama exhibition held at the National Gallery Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia, more than a year ago. The exhibit, which displayed nearly 200 of Kusama’s artworks, ran from December 15, 2024 to April 21, 2025, and was attended by over half a million visitors.
Among the pieces displayed from the Camacho collection were Kusama’s Sex Obsession painting and her Statue of Venus Obliterated by Infinity Nets sculpture. Sex Obsession can be viewed at 1:27 into this Yayoi Kusama overview video below published by NGV Melbourne, while Statue of Venus Obliterated is shown at 1:31.
The Camachos first encountered Kusama artworks during the couple’s visit to Japan in 2004, or 22 years ago, when Kusama’s popularity was starting to peak. Upon the invitation of the Japanese government, they visited Tokyo, where there was a retrospective on Kusama at the National Museum of Modern Art.
Kim had not heard of Kusama prior to that, but she was wowed by her works of art.
“I was immediately attracted to her works because they were so different. There was something very original and fresh about them, and the retrospective showed how adept she was at different mediums: she started with very small watercolors, moving to acrylic on canvas and sculptural pieces, and eventually entire room installations. Her versatility, sense of fun, originality and uniqueness were just outstanding!” she said in an interview with Art Outreach, a Singapore-based nonprofit visual arts organization, published in 2021.
Upon his wife’s insistence, Lito said he made sure to also include in his itinerary a visit to the museum, spent an hour looking at Kusama’s work, and was “awed by Kusama’s art as Kim was,” he said in the same interview with Art Outreach.
“You have to consider that she started her art back in the ’50s as a Japanese woman who had moved to New York, so she was an outsider, and yet she persisted. I also got a sense of her courage and strong conviction because she was not very successful in the early days. Even her works from the ’50s and ’60s remain as contemporary today, and that shows how significant and important her art is in history. I guess we just fell in love, and that was the start of our love affair with Kusama,” he said.
In 2005, when the Camachos moved to Singapore after Lito’s three-year stint in the Arroyo administration, they went to a Kusama exhibition in an art gallery, where they bought their first Kusama pieces. At that time, Lito said the “fairly small works” were still reasonably priced.
Kim did more research on Kusama, and the couple decided to “buy as many pieces” as they could given the still reasonable prices. “They were about 10% of what her prices are now. In some cases, even 1%,” she said.
Lito said they “were buying Kusama works wherever we could find them,” and within five years, they “had built enough of a collection to hold our own exhibition.”
“Our Kusama collection continues to grow as we have decided we’d like to hold a major retrospective one day that covers the full spectrum of her works from early to late, small to very large, and all the different mediums, so we still try to fill any gaps we have,” he added.
The couple now has over 100 pieces of Kusama’s works.
Among the popular Kusama works the Camachos purchased were a polka-dotted 300-kilo yellow pumpkin called Great Gigantic Pumpkin, installed in their home in Makati, and a Ladder to Home installation, purchased in 2006, which had amazed Kim when she first saw it in 2004.
“It is mind-boggling when you look up and down and see the ladder going endlessly into infinity. At the Singapore Biennale in 2006, which was the first biennale of Singapore, the work was displayed inside a Hindu temple. I went to see it and was still so impressed, so I persisted in enquiring when one became available, and that is the one we have now,” Kim told Art Outreach.
The ladder is installed in the Camachos’ main living room.
Lito, in an interview with ICON Magazine Singapore, described their Kusama collection as “very studied” and “very deliberate.”
“It’s the whole perspective of Kusama, from the earliest to the latest, in all the medium that she has done,” he said.
“So, from her early drawings and watercolors to works of acrylic on canvas…we have the longest work of Kusama, which is 100 meters long in soft sculpture,” Kim added in the same interview.
In an interview in 2017 with CoBo, a content platform for art enthusiasts, the Camachos said they got to meet Kusama in her studio and spent two hours — instead of an expected 15-minute encounter — with the artist when she was 84 years old.
“It was quite an experience; she’s almost childlike. You can tell there’s something very special about her,” Lito said. “We were warned before the visit that if we were able to get 10 or 15 minutes of her time, we’re doing very, very well…. So, we had expected to have a couple of photos, shake her hands, maybe have something signed, and that’s it.”
“I was so delighted with how warm she was to us. I thought she would be forbidding and like standoffish and impossible to touch. [But] no, she was so warm, allowed me to touch her hand,” Kim said. “She was very excited to be with us. She’s so nice.”
Where to see Yayoi Kusama art in Japan
With Japan rising in popularity for Filipino tourists, the best place to see Kusama’s works is in her own five-story Yayoi Kusama Museum in 107 Bentencho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
I got a chance to visit the museum in November 2019, when one could visit even without a booking in advance and without a specified and limited time slot.
There was a multi-color polka-dotted giant silver pumpkin on the top floor of the building.
It also had a Ladder to Heaven installation with the warning, “For the protection of the artwork and your own safety, make sure not to step on the circular mirror at the bottom of the artwork.”
On what she aspired for in putting up the museum, Kusama said:
“I infused my eternal soul into this museum. I want you to be guided by my sincere desire: I wish for everyone to realize all the inspirations in my art.
“The Museum will be a testament to my truth, that I have been living my life. Perhaps the museum can deliver love for all humanity, accompanying both life and death, seeking to attain the world’s supreme peace, having revealed out of all the love a hymn for humanity’s eternal life.
“This is my great hope in founding this museum.”
For those traveling to Fukuoka, there’s a Great Gigantic Pumpkin installed outside the Fukuoka Art Museum at the popular tourist spot, Odori Park. It is a cheap and quick way to get a photo with Kusama’s iconic art piece. – Rappler.com
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