The Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama died this month at the age of 97. Kusama was best known for her “Infinity Rooms,” mirrored environments that create the illusion of endless space and frequently feature bright, polka-dotted motifs. The artist enjoyed a resurgence in recent years as her visually arresting work took off on social media, dovetailing with renewed interest in the contributions of women to 20th century art.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston acquired the largest of Kusama’s mirrored installations, “Love Is Calling,” in 2019. As it happens, the museum is set to display the work this fall for the first time since its ICA debut seven years ago.

“For us to be able to bring this artwork back out at a moment of, really, the loss of one of our greatest visionary artists, is a chance to hopefully invite a broader audience and more visitors,” said ICA chief curator Ruth Erickson.

“Love Is Calling” measures roughly 20 by 28 feet and can accommodate a dozen people at a time. Inside, illuminated polka-dotted tentacles protrude from the mirrored floor and ceiling, reflecting off the walls to create the dizzying impression of standing inside a vast, spotted sea creature. An audio recording of Kusama reciting one of her poems in Japanese plays on a loop.

Inside “Love is Calling,” by artist Yayoi Kusama, which reopens at the ICA, Boston in October. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

“ In some ways this work, ‘Love Is Calling’, is so photogenic, and on the other hand, there are things that a still photograph can never capture from the experience,” Erickson said.

“Love Is Calling” is part of a sweeping retrospective of the ICA marking its 90th anniversary. “90 Years” will display Kusama’s “Infinity Room” alongside works from nine shows from the museum’s history. Visitors will be able to purchase timed tickets to “Love Is Calling” online and onsite, pending availability. The exhibit opens Oct. 15.

The exhibition also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the ICA’s permanent collection. The acquisition of “Love Is Calling” in 2019 was a coup for the museum, which at the time had been building its collection for little more than a decade. The installation opened to visitors in September 2019 and was set to remain on view until February 2021, but was forced to close early due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“ We have been thinking about the right opportunity to put it back on view, but it’s a big undertaking. It’s many tractor trailers of crated components,” Erickson said. “When I thought about those works that really reflect what we could imagine for the future of our collection, this was the work that really came to mind.”

Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan and moved to the United States in 1957. She made a splash in 1960s avant-garde New York, staging naked “happenings” in protest of the Vietnam War and, in a group show in 1962, overshadowing early works by Andy Warhol and Robert Morris with a couch covered in phalluses. Her experiments in infinitely replicated motifs, and her canny leveraging of her public image to generate interest in her work, lay the ground for her male contemporaries.

“Virtually every art movement of the 20th century, whether you think about pop art, minimalism, performance art, feminist art — she is kind of the forebear, the grandmother, if you will, of many of these movements,” former ICA chief curator Eva Respini told WBUR in 2019. “And I think we wouldn’t see a lot of the art that we see today without Kusama.”

Kusama returned to Japan in the 1970s, where she suffered a mental health crisis and checked herself into an institution. She lived there voluntarily until her death, all while continuing to create. Her career saw a resurgence in the 1990s and seemed only to grow over time, as the advent of Instagram made her polka-dotted “Infinity Rooms” go viral. She secured brand deals with Louis Vuitton and Coca-Cola. Even revelations in 2017 of disturbing racist remarks in her 2002 memoir didn’t seem to dampen her popularity. (Kusama eventually apologized in a statement in 2023.) She remained one of the most collectible living artists, and at the time of her death enjoyed lucrative, mainstream global success.

Erickson described Kusama as “pathbreaking.”

“ Kusama’s impact has been one of intense commitment and bravery,” she said, “as a woman artist making her way through the contemporary art world.”