image credit: Jason de Caires Taylor
When You are coming to Mexico, You should come to the new attraction in Mexico. It is The Cancun Underwater Museum. The Cancun Underwater Museum was created by Jason de Caires Taylor in the crystalline blue expanse of the Caribbean near Cancun and Isla Mujeres, Mexico, with life-size castings of local residents. The Cancun Underwater Museum Officially opened its doors on November 26, 2010, completing the exhibition titled “The Silent Evolution” by artist Jason Taylor deCaires. The museum was created because of concern about the damage to coral reefs and marine ecosystems.
With 400 life-size sculptures submerged, this completed phase 2 of the world’s largest underwater museum, located in the beautiful waters of Cancun. Just days after almost all the sculptures were submerged, the welcoming they received by Mother Nature was amazing, with hundreds of swarming Gray Angel fish, that up until now, were rarely seen around the Manchones area. The main gallery is formed by 400 life-size figures, based on real people. Its building required 18 months of hard work, 120 tons of cement, 400 kg of silicone, 3,800 glass fiber and more than 120 submarine work hours, as well as effort and dedication from a committed team with a dream, that began almost two years ago.
“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,” writes the artist. “By diverting attention to artificial reefs, natural reefs have now been given a greater chance to repair and to regenerate.”
When first submerged, the pieces look naked and vulnerable, but quickly marine life grows on them, casting each in a unique patina of biology and character. Compared to the common public sculpture of a state in a park, tainted by pigeon dropping, it restores basic human dignity to the form in clever, natural way.
image credit: Jason de Caires Taylor
Take the case of Sienna, for example, a character drawn from a short story called “A Different Ocean” by Jacob Ross. De Caires Taylor gave Sienna a concrete head and open metal body. Water currents, fish, and nutrients pass through her as she collects filter-feeding organisms, who then give substance to her skeletal form. And her head, which begins pale and without hue, take on its own phases of life, gradually shifting in tone, the face striking in contrast from the hair, until a more uniform aging takes over, a submarine simulacrum of life.
De Caires Taylor’s first major Caribbean efforts were off Grenada, but his current work is farther south, where the first three pieces have been submerged and settled into place. Phase two is under way, with 200 sculptures to be in place by June and another 200 by the end of the year.
reference : www.adventure-journal.com and www.underwatersculpture.com
