Jason deCaires Taylor (born 12 August 1974 in Dover), the founder of the underwater museum concept, is a British sculptor and creator of the world's first underwater sculpture park – the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park – and underwater museum – Cancún Underwater Museum (MUSA). He is best known for installing site-specific underwater sculptures that develop naturally into artificial coral reefs, which local communities and marine life depend on. Taylor integrates his skills as a sculptor, marine conservationist,"Underwater Wonderland-The-Deep-Sea-Art" ″Mutual Art″, 3 November 2010. underwater photographer″Wide Angle Natural Light no Strobe, Silver Medal″ 2007. and scuba diving instructorNunes, Neil,Sculpture Park″ ″BBC Caribbean Radio Interview″, 13 July 2007. into each of his projects. By using a fusion of Land Art traditions and subtly integrating aspects of street art, Taylor produces dynamic sculptural works that are installed on the ocean floor to encourage marine life, to promote ocean conservation and to highlight the current climate crisis.
Taylor's works in Grenada have been listed among the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. His projects to date include the creation of the Cancún Underwater Museum, Ocean Atlas, The Rising Tide, Museo Atlántico, Nest, Coralarium, Nexus, Museum of Underwater Art (MOUA), Écomusée sous-marin de Cannes, and the Museum of Underwater Sculpture Ayia Napa (MUSAN), Ocean Sentinels, The Coral Carnival, A World Adrift, Ocean Gaia, and The Solomon Siren.
Early life The only son of an English father and Guyanese mother, Taylor was educated in Kent with further studies at Camberwell College of Arts Institute of London, where he graduated in 1998 with a B.A Honours degree in Sculpture and Ceramics.Voigts, Dr Jessie, ″Jason deCaires Taylor & Museo Subauatico de Arte(MUSA)″ ″Wandering Educators″, 19 June 2010 Scuba diving from the age of 18, he became a fully qualified scuba instructor in 2002.
Career
Taylor's early work includes Vicissitudes, Grace Reef, The Lost Correspondent and The Unstill Life. All of these artworks are located in the world's first public underwater sculpture park in the Caribbean Sea in Molinere Bay, Grenada, West Indies, and situated in a section of coastline that was badly damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
Taylor's works create haunting, enigmatic underwater scenes, often depicting the mundaneness of life on dry land transported into an alchemic new environment. Instead of the entropic process typically associated with the ocean's corrosive tendencies, Taylor's pieces encourage organisms to grow and affect the surfaces of his creations. They are often commentaries on humanity's relationship with the natural world and the need for conservation, decay and rebirth. The majority of his sculptures are based on living people who are life cast and whose phenotypical qualities alter over time as they slowly evolve from inert concrete to living artificial reefs.Vickers, Dave ‘Wet behind the Ears’, Modern Design, Architecture and Art, p.95, London, June 2008. Taylor considers that he is "trying to portray how human intervention or interaction with nature can be positive and sustainable, an icon of how we can live in a symbiotic relationship with nature."
In 2009 Taylor relocated his practice to Mexico, where he achieved another milestone: the creation of the world's first underwater museum. The Cancún Underwater Museum (Museo Subacuático de Arte, known as MUSA) holds more than 485 of Taylor's submerged sculptures and 30 land-based pieces. It is located off the coast of Cancún and the Western coast of Isla MujeresLauren Meir,
″Underwater Wonderland-The-Deep-Sea-Art″ ″Mutual Art″, 3 November 2010. within the Cancún National Marine Park, and occupies an area of over 420 square metres of previously barren seabed. The project was supported and commissioned in 2008 by CONANP, National Commission of Mexican Protected Natural Areas (Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas) and The Cancún Nautical Association. MUSA was officially opened in November 2010.
Works in the museum include individual installations implanted with live coral cuttings rescued from areas of damaged reef. Hombre en llamas (Man on Fire), cast from a local fisherman, stands towards the current with fragments of implanted fire coral in his head and torso.Kradel, Kimberly Article in Yucutan Artist-at-large , 1 July 2010. La Jardinera (The Gardener) is a girl lying on a patio nurturing a variety of potted corals. Other works include El colecionista de los sueños (The Dream Collector), a man archiving messages found inside bottles that have been brought together by the oceans’ currents.
Taylor created La Evolución Silencio (The Silent Evolution), which was added to MUSA in 2011. The artwork consists of more than 400 individual sculptures that immortalised about 90 real-life models from the nearby fishing village of Puerto Morelos to create a community of people, standing in defence of their oceans. The location for this particular installation was chosen to redirect visitors away from nearby natural reefs, providing these with the opportunity to regenerate. MUSA is referenced as one of the largest and most ambitious projects underwater in the world.
While continuing to produce additional pieces for MUSA, Taylor completed a unique creation for illusionist David Copperfield. The Musician, which is a full-scale mermaid seating at a Steinway concert grand piano replica, can be found in Musha Cay, Bahamas. The piano plays soft classical music, similar to the sound of a whale or dolphin, as divers approach.
By the end of 2013, Taylor had placed nearly 700 sculptures around the globe. In 2014 Ocean Atlas was installed in the Bahamas weighing 60 tons and measuring 5 metres in height. Taylor's immense sculpture modelled after a local Bahamian girl, depicts her carrying the weight of the ocean, referencing the ancient Greek myth of Atlas. Ocean Atlas was awarded a Guinness World Record for being the largest single figurative underwater sculpture in the world.
The Rising Tide was Taylor's first tidal installation in Central London and was part of the 2015 Totally Thames Festival. The series of working horses with riders, loosely based on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, were positioned within sight of the Houses of Parliament. "I quite like the idea that the piece sits in the eye line of the place where many politicians and so many people who are involved in climate change all work and make these damaging deals and policies, yet who are in this state of mad denial," Taylor said. The artwork was intended to provide a metaphor for rising sea levels, demonstrating how little time there is to act to climate change, yet crucially it offers hope as it resets itself each day, offering humankind the opportunity for change.
After relocating to Lanzarote, Spain in 2016, Taylor began work on his second underwater museum, Museo Atlántico, offshore. The museum opened on 10 January 2017 within Lanzarote's UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve and was first underwater museum within Europe and in the Atlantic Ocean. Museo Atlántico contains over 300 of Taylor's sculptures and includes Crossing The Rubicon, which consists of a 4 meters high wall that stretches 30 metre long and 35 life-sized figurative sculptures walking towards it, all unaware that they are heading to a point of no return while they are looking down or at their phones. The wall acts as a reminder that our surrounding oceans, air, climate or wildlife cannot be segregated. The Raft of Lampedusa, a sculpted boat carrying 13 refugees towards an unknown future, is also part of Museo Atlántico. The inspiration for this piece came from Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. Amongst the figures life-cast by Taylor for The Raft of Lampedusa was Abdel Kader, a refugee from Laayoune, who made his own journey by boat to Lanzarote when he was 13 years old. Another large artwork found within the museum is The Human Gyre, which was created by placing over 200 life-size human figures into the shape of an oceanic gyre. The piece is aimed to highlight mankind's vulnerability to the ocean's inherent power. Museo Atlántico is accessible to scuba divers and snorkelers who are accompanied by museum guides.
In 2017, Taylor traveled to Indonesia and installed his artwork, Nest, off the cost of Gili Meno. The circle of 48 life-size figures was commissioned by BASK to act as an artificial reef and diving attraction for tourists and the local community. During the same year, Taylor started designing an underwater museum for the Australian Museum of Underwater Art (MOUA) project, which would be installed within the Great Barrier Reef.
In 2018, Taylor went from the tropical climate of Sirru Fen Fushi in the Maldives to the icy fjords in Norway. Commissioned by the Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi Resort, Coralarium was the world's first semi-submerged museum. The 6 metre high stainless steel gallery cube weighs over 180 tonnes and was constructed in the UK and assembled on site. The tidal artwork was part of the first coral regeneration project to take place in the Maldives. Following the removal and destruction of the 30 figurative sculptures in September 2018, which was ordered by President Abdulla Yameen, alternative artworks were integrated into the gallery and further sustainable initiatives have since been introduced. The Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi Resort has been recognised as a Green Globe certified organisation and continues to work with Taylor.
Later the same year, Taylor completed Nexus for the Sjøholmen Children’s Art Centre in Sandvika, Norway. The aim of the art installation is to encourage exploration of art and nature, especially the diverse marine life found in the surrounding fjords. There are life-sized bronze sculptures of a father and daughter standing hand-in-hand on a floating dock, looking down into the fjord where ten additional figurative sculptures can be seen floating below the water's surface. In December 2019, Taylor completed two significant artwork installations for the Great Barrier Reef. Ocean Siren, a tidal sculpture located at the Strand Jetty in Townsville, was commissioned by MOUA and acts as a warning beacon for climate change. The artwork was modelled on a local 12-year-old indigenous Wulgurukaba girl, Takoda Johnson. Through collaborations with scientists from Reef Ecologic, James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) Ocean Siren reacts to data captured by the Davies Reef Weather Station and changes colour in response to live variations in water temperature. Taylor's third underwater museum, The Coral Greenhouse located in John Brewer Reef, comprises a 58-ton greenhouse-like structure made from marine grade stainless steel and 20 figurative sculptures placed in and around the building. The Coral Greenhouse is the first underwater museum in Australia and in the Southern Hemisphere.