Museo Subacuático de Arte - Jason deCaires Taylor

Jason deCaires Taylor's underwater art

Environmental artist sinks another 60 statues at underwater Cancun project, Museo Subacuático de Arte

 

Overly interested as we are at the moment by all things Concrete we were interested to see that the environmental artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who since 2009 has installed some 500 sculptures, each weighing around five tons under the sea near Cancún, Mexico, has just sunk another 60 this month. The area is called the Museo Subacuático de Arte and Taylor says it serves as a conservation effort by drawing divers and snorkelers away from the Mesoamerican Reef, the second-largest barrier reef system in the world.

Formerly known as the street artist Intro, Taylor grew up in England, Spain and Malaysia, where he developed a passion for diving and coral reefs. He trained at the Camberwell College of Arts, London where he developed an interest in environmental art.

The statues are meant to distract scuba diving tourists from other nearby reefs and also encourage new reef growth. Taylor uses marine-grade concrete specially prepared to entice coral and be close to neutral pH. See more images from the Museo Subacuático de Arte.

“It’s like putting a sculpture in the Sahara,” he says, contending that the works contribute to the greater good of preserving the natural reef by diverting divers away from it. Taylor is currently at work on a political work to be submerged in the deep sea in an unspecified ocean, to be seen only in photographs. “So much of life is built around myth,” he says  “I will put it so one hundred ships would never find it.”