"Weaving Time" by Motoi Yamamoto (Utazu, Setouchi Triennale 2025)

Today, I want to introduce a stunning artwork that sadly no longer exists. I hope you had the opportunity to experience it if you attended the Setouchi Triennale 2025 during the autumn session last year.As the title suggests, it was called "Weaving Time" and was created by Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto.There were two installations and a few smaller pieces, but the main one is the one pictured above and below.It's made of salt!All the white parts are made of salt that the artist carefully and painstakingly laid on the blue surface.He started working with salt for a very sad reason. He lost his younger sister in the 1990s, and he started drawing with salt to cope with his loss. He chose salt because it symbolizes purification in many aspects of Japanese culture, including funeral rites.It was only supposed to be for one installation, but he never stopped, and it became his material of choice.It's hard to imagine how much work went into it, and the most incredible part is that it was…