Jason deCaires Taylor is a sculptor that created the world’s first underwater sculpture park in Grenada, West Indies. Jason spent most of his childhood in the Malaysian coral reefs where he developed his interest and love for the ocean. After graduating from London Institute of Arts in 1998 he worked on art installations where after five years he gained enough knowledge to put his own unique projects into action.
Seven meters below the surface in Cancun, Mexico, you will find one of his projects called The Lost Correspondent which futures a person sitting behind a desk with a typewriter which is a symbol to represent our rapid changes in communications. Another one, 5 meters below the surface, you’ll see 30 cement life-size moulds of children symbolising the cycle of life.
As you may know, roughly one-quarter of coral reefs worldwide are already considered damaged almost beyond repair and Jason has certainly kept that in mind. Following text is from his page -”One of the greatest benefits of artificial reefs is that they have lifted the pressure off natural reefs which, over the past few decades, have been over-fished and over-visited. By diverting attention to artificial reefs, natural reefs have now been given a greater chance to repair and to regenerate”.
This underwater museum has been very successful in encouraging coral growth. The sculpture based on Sienna, a character from a story written by a Grenadian author Jacob Ross, is a sculpture designed to allow currents to pass through which provides a structure for filter feeding organisms to colonise.
To read more about Jason and his stories behind the work click here or to see the world’s largest underwater museum featuring 400 statues live, go directly to Punta Cancun in Mexico. When you get there it’s $40 for a snorkel, $65 for a one-tank dive, and $70 for two tanks.
‘The gardener of hope’ is surrounded by pots containing live coral cuttings saved from coral reefs that were damaged from visitation and hurricanes.
‘The Silent Evolution’, installed 8 meters deep behind the Manchones Reef, is a documentation on how we, along with our society, changes both socially and physically starting from Mayan times up to today’s society.
This sculpture weighs over 1 ton and was cast from a local Mexican fisherman named Joachim now called ‘Man on Fire’ because the 75 holes planted with small live cuttings of fire coral are expected to grow like fire.
The messages in these bottles are written by various communities who wrote about the today’s values and their hopes and dreams for future generations.
