Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto recently opened a new salt installation at the Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte, North Carolina. The “Floating Garden” took several weeks to prepare before a crowd of visitors were given the green light to destroy it. The museum says:
Salt, a traditional symbol for purification and mourning in Japanese culture, is used in funeral rituals and by sumo wrestlers before matches. It is frequently placed in small piles at the entrance to restaurants and other businesses to ward off evil spirits and to attract benevolent ones. Motoi forged a connection to the substance while mourning the death of his sister, at the age of twenty-four, from brain cancer, and began to create art out of salt in an effort to preserve his memories of her. His art radiates an intense beauty and tranquility, but also conveys something ineffable, painful, and endless.
