The First Undersea Art Museum In The Atlantic: Swim Through Hundreds Of Life-Size Sculptures

More than 400 life-like sculptures rest eerily on the ocean floor, recently installed off the coast of Lanzarote, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, to create the Museo Atlantico, the first underwater art museum in the Atlantic Ocean.

Under the sea selfies, Taylor’s commentary on mass tourism and its effects. Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

Just opened to the scuba diving-and-snorkeling public, the fantastic collection is the initial phase of a project created by the renowned, visionary British underwater sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor, for whom the ocean floors have become an exhibition space to house his enigmatic sculptures — commentaries on the transience of human existence, our relationship with nature, the power of the sea and its capacity for regeneration.

The Rubicon, in the Museo Atlantico, consists of 35 figures walking toward a gate the sculptor calls “a portal to another world.” Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

His life-size stone figures, attached to the sea floor with a special cement mix that draws ocean life to develop around them, are “tales of the world, reflections on climate change and habitat loss based on real-life characters, their stories and their relationship with the environment,” as Taylor explains in a TED talk. 

Born in 1974 to an English father and Guyanese mother, Taylor grew up in Europe and Asia, and spent much of his childhood exploring the coral reefs of Malaysia. After graduating from the London Institute of Arts in 1998, he became a diving instructor and underwater naturalist. He’s also an award-winning underwater photographer, known for dramatic images that capture the metamorphosing effects of the ocean on his evolving sculptures.

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Three figures from the installation, 50 feet under water off Lanzarote, Spain Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

He created the world’s first underwater sculpture park in 2006 off the west coast of Grenada in the West Indies, listed among National Geographic’s 25 Wonders of the World, and also co-founded Museo Subacuático de Arte, MUSA, in 2009, with a collection of over 500 of his underwater works, submerged off the coast of Cancún in Mexico.

He has been working for more than two years on the figures for the Museo Atlantico, modelled on natives of Lanzarote.  The newly-sunken displays are built from a special pH-neutral marine cement that attracts sea creatures and promotes the growth of coral indispensable to support marine life.

The Photographers, one of the sculptures in the exhibition funded by Lanzarote’s local government Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

Lanzarote’s authorities have announced that 2% of the revenue generated by the museum will be allocated to research and protection of the island’s aquatic species.

A nude in the installation, the next phase of which includes an underwater botanical garden Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

Taylor’s pieces are more than artificial reefs regenerating sea life. They’re social commentaries on human relationship with nature.

The Raft of Lampedusa  depicts Europe’s current immigration crisis Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

The Raft of Lampedusa, for example, one of the most haunting and impressive pieces, is a lifeboat piled with 13 surrealistic refugees, a play on Romantic painter Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa at the Louvre Museum in Paris. “Drawing parallels between the abandonment suffered by sailors in his shipwreck scene and the current refugee crisis, the work is not intended as a tribute or memorial to the many lives lost but as a stark reminder of the collective responsibility of our now global community,” Taylor writes.

Another angle of The Rubicon, a commentary on climate change and the world’s future Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor

The Rubicon, another extraordinary composition, consist of 35 figures frozen in time, walking towards a wall that the artist calls “a point of no return.”