Sculptures Made From Grains of Salt

Motoi Yamamoto’s sculpture is bringing a new meaning to ‘living in the moment’. The supremely disciplined artist from Hiroshima creates installations out of grains of salt. Using intricate techniques that involve layering, shaking, sweeping and infinite amounts of patience, he has made a labyrinth, a set of steps, a ‘corridor to remembrance’ and a series of complex patterns that imitate biological systems. When the works have run their course, he sends them back to the sea.

Yamamoto’s engagement with salt as a form started eighteen years ago, when he lost his sister to brain cancer. She was just 24, and struggling to cope with the loss, Yamamoto sought a way to recall his memories through his art. His very first piece was a bed comprised of bricks and the second, a three-dimensional representation of the human brain. In Japan, salt symbolises the processes of cleansing and mourning. Its use forms an important part of funeral rituals. Restaurateurs and small business owners often place salt at their doors, in the belief that it deters evil spirits and magnetises forces for good.

“I can’t tell if my feelings of death have been changed by the passage of time or by the process of creating my work,” Yamamoto told the Daily Serving in June last year. “I don’t have any way to compare to the two alternatives because I’ve only experienced this through my work, not through a more conventional mourning process.  I would like to think that it altered my thoughts on loss gradually, but I don’t know.”

Yamamoto’s salt installations have been exhibited in galleries all over the world, from the Ierimonti Gallery in Milan to the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, USA. Last month, they were on  show at the Mint Museum in Charlotte.