Sayaka Kajita Ganz is a sculptor who creates her artwork from recyclable materials - used materials that would have otherwise found their way into the trash. She collects these used and discarded objects from second hand stores and uses them to form beautiful works of art, which convey her history and her beliefs about the world.
Ganz was born in Yokohama, Japan, but spent much of her younger life moving around the world. When she was nine, her family moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and after 5 years they moved back to Japan. About 4 years after that, they moved to Hong Kong, where she graduated from high school. Finally, she came to the United States for university. She has stated that she never graduated from the same school she started in, and this constant relocation shaped her considerably. She believes that her experiences with growing up in several different countries opened up her thinking and made her flexible, but they also caused her to be disconnected from the country she was born in and made her crave the feeling of belonging.
Along with these experiences, Ganz grew up with the Shinto animist belief that all things in the world have spirits, even material objects. She holds onto this belief even while living in a world where waste has become a major problem. Her philosophy is that "if we value our resources we will waste less", and to show how beautiful ordinary objects can be, she uses them to create beautiful art.
The messages behind Ganz's artwork are complex and multi-faceted, and she conveys her many meanings through the discarded objects she uses to create them. Two of the main messages of her artwork are about reclamation and freedom. Her childhood experiences, combined with her Shinto beliefs and her love for nature, are her main inspirations for only using materials that were once used and then discarded to create her art. She feels as if she is giving these abandoned objects new lives and a sense of belonging that has always eluded her. She has said that "the human history behind these objects gives them life in my eyes. My goal is for each object to transcend its origins by being integrated into an animal form that seems alive. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist".
By manipulating and assembling them in different ways, she uses these "curvi-linear" objects to create an effect similar to brush strokes in an impressionist painting. With Emergence: Night & Wind, for example, she simulates motion lines to create an illusion that the horses are truly moving. She proves that it is possible to recreate used materials into something that feels alive and beautiful.
From far away, it is difficult to notice the individual objects, and all you really see is the overall form and motion of the horses. When you take a closer look, though, you begin to notice the individual objects used to create the sculpture and feel the familiarity of these common objects. Treating her art like a puzzle, Ganz spends a great deal of time figuring out how these objects, objects that are so different from one another, can fit together. She conveys a message about harmony and perspective by putting these seemingly unrelated objects together in a way that, by looking at the "bigger picture", work together perfectly.
I spent a great deal of time looking at famous sculptures online, and the first time I saw Sayaka Ganz's Emergence: Night & Wind, her artwork stood out to me right away. I found her running horses to be some of the most beautiful sculptures I have ever seen, and the other sculptures I found of hers later (such as the bird and the whale shown below) are equally breathtaking. The themes that inspire her ("nature and life energy of animals..the motion, wind, water current, waves, and time") have led her to create such incredible and meaningful pieces of art.
Once I had fully explored the complex and intriguing messages behind her art, the beauty of her work grew in my eyes. Her sculptures are not only pleasing to the eye, but each and every one of them carries so much meaning and significance. She puts so much thought into the inspirations behind her sculptures as well as to the process she uses to create them, and this only adds to the greatness of her artwork. Her work is extremely masterful, and the fact that her sculptures truly look like they are alive and moving still amazes me.
