Jason deCaires Taylor


Jason deCaires Taylor is a British sculptor and creator of the world's first underwater sculpture park – the Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park – and underwater museum. He is best known for installing site-specific underwater sculptures which develop into artificial coral reefs integrating his skills as a sculptor, marine conservationist, underwater photographer and scuba diving instructor. His works in Grenada have been listed among the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. His most ambitious projects to date are the creation of the world's largest underwater sculpture museum, the Cancún Underwater Museum, situated off the coast between Cancún and Isla Mujeres, Mexico, and Ocean Atlas, a 5-metre tall, 60-ton sculpture off the Bahamas. Taylor is currently based on the island of Lanzarote, Spain, working on a major new underwater museum for the Atlantic Ocean.

Early life

The only son of an English father and Guyanese mother, Taylor was educated in cators″, 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 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 creation. 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. 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 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 Mujeres. The project was supported and commissioned in 2008 by CONANP, National Commission of Mexican Protected Natural Areas and The Cancún Nautical Association, officially opening in November 2010.
Works in the museum include individual installations implanted with live coral cuttings rescued from areas of damaged reef. Hombre en llamas, cast from a local fisherman, stands towards the current with fragments of implanted fire coral in his head and torso,. La Jardinera is a girl lying on a patio nurturing a variety of potted corals. Other works include El colecionista de los sueños, a man archiving messages found inside bottles that have been brought together by the oceans’ currents
La Evolución Silenciosa is the largest underwater collection of art. It was installed in MUSA in November 2010 and consists of 450 life-size cement people standing side by side on a barren patch of sand. While the appearance of the collection underwater is of a crowd of people, from a distance it take the shape of an eye. The collection occupies over 420 square metres of ocean floor; the location 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.
By the end of 2013, Taylor had placed nearly 700 sculptures around the globe. Works completed in 2014 include Ocean Atlas, located in the Bahamas, the largest single underwater sculpture in the world at 5 metres tall and weighing 60 tons.
In 2015 Taylor installed his first London commission, The Rising Tide. "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," he said.
In 2016, Taylor was based in Lanzarote, Spain, working on a new underwater museum, Museo Atlántico, which offshore. The museum consists of about 300 statues, some simply standing upright, others in situations such as a man lying on a funeral pyre or a group of refugees in a boat. The museum opened on 10 January 2017 and is open to scuba divers who are accompanied by museum guides.
In 2017, Taylor started scoping for the Australian Museum of Underwater Art, Great Barrier Reef, Townsville

Conservation

Taylor has gained worldwide recognition as one of the first artists to integrate contemporary art with the conservation of marine life. These underwater artificial coral reefs installations divert tourists away from natural coral reefs that are already suffering effects from marine pollution, global warming, hurricane damage and overfishing, thus providing the opportunity for the natural reefs’ rehabilitation.
Working alongside marine biologists, Taylor uses resilient, stable and environmentally responsive materials. He integrates a coral promoting neutral pH cement and propagates damaged coral fragments found in the ocean into preset keys in his figures. The structures also incorporate habitat spaces for marine life that will promote an increase in biomass of local ecosystems.
The sculptures are positioned in precise locations on the sea bed to avoid contact from strong currents and tidal patterns and are installed at the correct time for coral spawning to maximize their potential influence to the oceanic ecosystem.
Art writer, Dr David De Russo, writes that "the sculptures are a living evolutionary exhibition as nature colonizes, and the sea and tidal movement deform their appearance developing a platform which will promote the re-generation of marine life. They are a means of conveying hope and environmental awareness"
By encompassing bio-restorative and culturally educational properties Taylors work has been categorised as part of the eco-art movement. In 2010, his work featured in the campaign by Greenpeace for awareness of Global Warming ahead of the 2010 United Nations Climate Conference in Cancún.

Recognition