Enormous salt sculptures by Motoi Yamamoto..
Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto creates incredibly intricate mazes made entirely out of salt! There is definitely an otherworldly and entirely unique feeling that is evoked when stepping into a room that has been utterly transformed by an installation piece. In this case, the magical feeling is all thanks to Motoi Yamamoto
And the most important and most inspiring thing about his art is the tragic story behind all this. He was a third-year student at the Kanazawa College of Art in 1996 when his younger sister died at the young age of 24 — two years after being diagnosed with brain cancer. To ease his grief and to honor her memory, he starting working on these installations. Salt has a special place in the death rituals of Japan, and is often handed out to people at the end of funerals, so they can sprinkle it on themselves to ward off evil. Since 2001, he's been creating these amazing floor installations by filling a plastic bottle, usually used for machine oil, with white salt and then sprinkling it on the floor.As he told Japan Times, "I draw with a wish that, through each line, I am led to a memory of my sister. That is always at the bottom of my work. Each cell-like part, to me, is a memory of her that I call up, like a tiff I had with her over a pudding cake she took from the fridge. My wish is to put such tiny episodes together."
