Event 2: Return to the Sea

Return to the Sea is a salt work by Motoi Yamamoto. 

Yamamoto is a Japanese artist who works exclusively with salt, often drawing inspiration from nature as well as his past. Yamamoto has created works all across the world, in places such as New York, Tokyo, and Jerusalum. In his works, Yamamoto painstakingly pours grains of salt onto a floor in order to create his art, a process which can often take up to a week.

Yamamoto uses salt as a form of symbolism. Salt is a Japanese symbol for purification and mourning, which is significant because the death of his sister is part of what inspired him to create his works. Also, salt is often used in Japanese culture to ward off evil spirits and to attract benevolent spirits, which symbolizes Yamamoto's attempts to preserve the good memories he has of his sister. 

Yamamoto also incorporates scientific elements of the origin of salt into his works. At the end of each of his works, Yamamoto will invite locals to help him scrape off the salt and return it to the ocean, thereby completing its life cycle. One of his hopes is that eventually he will reuse one of the molecules of sodium that he had previously returned to the ocean in a future work.

This particular salt work was inspired by aerial photographs taken to study monsoons. The scientific origin of the inspiration for this work made me realize the various artistic uses for scientific research that was originally intended for only one purpose. I came to the realization that when one allows the Two Cultures to mix, one can reveal completely new works of art or scientific theories that never would have existed had they remained separate.