Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkin Sculpture Lands in Kai Tak — and It's Free to See

There is a new giant in Kai Tak, and it is bright green, covered in dots and shaped like a pumpkin. The Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin that arrived in Kai Tak this month is not a pop-up or a touring loan — it is here for good. Standing three metres tall in the open plaza at The Twins, the sculpture is the first permanent outdoor public artwork by Yayoi Kusama (草間彌生) anywhere in Hong Kong. Best of all, you do not need a ticket to stand beneath it.

Why a green pumpkin in Kai Tak matters

Hong Kong has flirted with Yayoi Kusama before, but never quite like this. The artist's polka-dotted pumpkins have popped up in pop-up shows, a blockbuster M+ retrospective and the odd brand collaboration. Each time, they eventually packed up and left.

This one stays. The Kai Tak sculpture is billed as the city's first permanent outdoor Kusama, unveiled on 6 June 2026 by Lifestyle International, the group behind the SOGO department stores. That permanence is the headline. It turns a shopping plaza into a free, open-air gallery and gives Hong Kong a fixed address for one of the most recognisable images in contemporary art.

It also lands in the right place at the right time. Kai Tak, built on the runway of the old airport, has spent the past two years filling in: a new stadium, a metro station, a harbourfront and now a flagship retail-and-art district. A monumental Kusama is exactly the kind of anchor that gives a young neighbourhood a reason to be on the cultural map. For the bigger picture, our guide to the best public art installations in Hong Kong shows how the city's open-air art scene is growing.

What exactly is the sculpture?

The work is simply called Pumpkin (南瓜), and it is unmissable. It rises about three metres from the plaza floor, its plump body finished in a vivid emerald green and wrapped in Kusama's trademark constellation of bold black dots. Where her best-known pumpkins are sunshine yellow, this one is a rarer green — reportedly one of only two of its kind in the world.

Scale is part of the appeal. Up close, the dots stretch and shrink across the curves of the gourd, an optical rhythm that Kusama has chased her whole career. Set in a sunlit plaza rather than behind museum glass, it invites the thing most galleries forbid: getting close, circling it, and taking a photo. The sculpture is engineered for the outdoors and for crowds, which is precisely why it works as public art.

Where is the Kusama pumpkin and how do you see it?

The sculpture stands in the open plaza of Tower I at The Twins, the twin-tower retail complex on Concord Road in Kai Tak. Tower I is the one anchored by the new SOGO Kai Tak (崇光) department store; its sister, Tower II, trades as SNDO. The development's tagline is "Different together", and the pumpkin now sits at the heart of it.

Getting there is easy. Take the MTR Tuen Ma Line to Kai Tak Station (啟德) and leave by Exit B, heading towards SOGO; the towers are a short, signposted walk away. Because the work is outdoors and free, there is no queue, no cloakroom and no time slot — you simply arrive. That makes it one of the easiest art outings in the city, and a genuinely good one for families. If you are planning around little ones, our roundup of the best kid-friendly activities in Hong Kong pairs nicely with a Kai Tak afternoon.

Why pumpkins? Kusama's lifelong motif

Few artists are as instantly recognisable as Yayoi Kusama, and few motifs are as bound to one person as the pumpkin is to her. Now in her nineties, the Japanese artist has worked across painting, sculpture, performance and room-filling installation for more than seventy years — but the humble gourd keeps returning.

The fascination began in childhood. Kusama has spoken of pumpkins as a source of comfort, a "sanctuary of the spirit" that helped her channel the hallucinations she experienced from a young age into art. To her, each one has its own character — generous, unpretentious, a little funny. The polka dots, meanwhile, come from the same place: a way of dissolving herself into a pattern of "infinite nets" that has defined her work since the 1950s.

That backstory is why a Kusama pumpkin reads as more than decoration. It is a piece of one of the most important living artists' inner world, made public. Her yellow-and-black pumpkins drew global crowds during major showings in 2022, and her art has since reached Hong Kong through partnerships with the MTR, the M+ Museum and even the tea chain Heytea. To see where her contemporaries sit in the city, our look at the best art exhibitions in Hong Kong this summer and the latest M+ shows across the harbour map out the wider scene.

This is only phase one

The pumpkin is the opening move, not the whole game. Lifestyle International has framed it as the first phase of a much larger public-art programme at The Twins, with the aim of turning the plaza into a free, world-class sculpture destination in Kowloon East.

More Kusama works are due to join it before the end of 2026, in what the group calls the most comprehensive public presentation of her work yet seen in Kai Tak. Beyond Kusama, two more heavyweight names are confirmed: Sir Antony Gormley, the British sculptor behind the Angel of the North, with a work titled BIG SPLICE; and the Japanese artist Izumi Ando, with A Tree & A Pair Of Horses. The pitch is simple — make serious contemporary art a part of everyday life, free at the point of looking.

Make a day of it in Kai Tak

One sculpture, however striking, is a short visit. Happily, Kai Tak has grown into a proper half-day out. The Twins puts a major mall, the pumpkin and the waterfront within a few minutes of each other, and the wider district keeps adding things to do.

Within easy reach are the Kai Tak Sports Park and stadium, the Kai Tak Runway Park along the old airport spine, and the harbourfront promenade with its open views back to the island. It is flat, stroller-friendly and well served by the metro — an easy add-on to a bigger weekend plan. For more on what is happening across the city this season, our guide to the biggest events in Hong Kong this summer rounds up the calendar, while the official Hong Kong Tourism Board site has the latest on the Kai Tak district.

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