Giant sculptures out of salt by Motoi Yamamoto
Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto builds giant sculptures out of salt. An exhibition of the Japanese artist’s work is currently taking place at the Hakone Open-Air Museum in Kanagawa, Japan. Meanwhile, it is causing quite a stir. The story behind Yamamoto’s unusual technique is sad and tragic. He was a third-year student at the Kanazawa College of Art in 1996 when his younger sister died aged 24, two years after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Noteworthy, salt has a special place in the death rituals of Japan. In particular, it is often being handed out to people at the end of a funeral so they can sprinkle it on themselves to ward off evil.

Yamamoto creates the amazing floor installations by filling a plastic bottle, usually used for machine oil, with white salt and then painstakingly sprinkling it on the floor.

According to the artist, drawing a labyrinth with salt is like following a trace of my memory. Memories seem to change and vanish as time goes by.

‘However, what I seek is the way in which I can touch a precious moment in my memories that cannot be attained through pictures or writings. ‘I always silently follow the trace, that is controlled as well as uncontrolled from the start point after I have completed it.’
At the end of an exhibition Yamamoto always requests that the salt is returned to the ocean to make its journey come full circle.

Giant sculptures out of salt by Motoi Yamamoto

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