It’s a pretty cool concept, I’ll give it that: dot stickers handed out to kids to stick on walls and furniture that served as a 3D canvas of the collaborative and growing pattern of colourful circles typical of Yayoi Kusama’s art.

Raven was a bit bummed that it wasn’t the actual Yayoi Kusama Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. I told her she was gonna be my Yayoi Kusama buddy and she assumed we were going on that day but I hadn’t booked tickets then as I knew it was gonna be crazy in December, with Christmas and school holidays in full swing; and with the exhibition having had just opened. The number of people queuing up for tickets was enough to make me postpone going until maybe February or March this year. Hopefully by then, all of Melbourne had already been and the crowd wouldn’t be as hectic.

So we settled for The Obliteration Room in the meantime. The room was rather small and the the stickers were rationed to one sheet per visitor but all in all, it was still a pretty fun experience in a low-key kinda way.

I mean, for a free event, I can’t complain.

As we were already at the museum, my sister and I decided to check out the free art scene and pretend that we were cultured people who gaze thoughtfully at displayed masterpieces as if we knew what we we were doing, or what we were even looking at.

My sister said her friend, who’s into art, said it’s all about the hands especially when it comes to painting. I don’t know exactly what that means. Maybe having all fingers and their veins accounted for is the litmus test for an excellent work of art.

Personally, as much as I was drawn to the religious sculptures and how intricately carved they were, I was a moth to a flame when presented with the contemporary moving-image work of Natasha Matila-Smith’s If I Die, Please Delete My Soundcloud.

Call me weird but I liked it. Apart from the short poetic verses on the screen, there was only the artist tossing and turning in her bed next to a laptop. There was no sound. It was all a visual imagery with an underlying tone of loneliness palpable enough if you took the time to sit down and take it all in.

It’s the epitome of life in the digital age where the internet becomes a form of escape. How lonely it can be for others out there simply yearning for connection. It’s a raw portrayal of the sadness on the other side of the screen.

I sat there long after the other visitors had left.

*Raven at 8 years old