Something eerie is happening, down Mexico way...

After a youth spent on the dry side of the water (another post for another day), I have come to love SCUBA diving with a passion. I also love art and photography projects that explore the way nature reclaims all things, in time. (My wife dubbed this obsession “elegant decay” – stuff that’s falling apart and looks good doing it.) Soon there’s going to be an opportunity to combine those passions in one of my favourite places – the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Artist Jason de Caires Taylor is installing the largest underwater sculpture garden in the world, in the waters adjacent to Isla Mujeres, not too far from Cancun. I find this idea captivating. Normally the human world and the underwater world are so forcibly separated by medium, light and a host of other factors, and this project will bring them into eerie juxtaposition. The proposed 200 human figures reclining, working, or even riding a bicycle, contrasting with the reef, fishes and rippling filtered sunlight is just great. How do I know, if it hasn’t been built yet? Because he’s already done similar work on a much smaller scale in the Keys and Grenada.

Some might argue that this stuff is visual pollution of a reef that should just be appreciated for the biological wonder that it is, but I couldn’t disagree more. Especially when the reef begins to claim the sculptures as its own, in time incorporating their forms into its structure and adding its own patina of life, like a painter stepping back from the canvas and daubing the final blobs of color here and there. By then, we and the reef will be one and the same, and that idea really resonates with me. Installation begins in June. I can’t wait to see it when I am down in Mexico this summer.

What do you think – art or pollution?