“
“
The light is
amazing in
Lanzarote
The project began three years ago when a German art dealer
recommended Jason Taylor to Lanzarote Cabildo. At that time, Jason was
working on his Cancún project, but three years later he´s hard at work
making the Lanzarote underwater museum a reality.
It´s not surprising why the idea caught the attention of the local
authorities. Jason Taylor´s work is typical of the kind of environmentally
sensitive interaction between nature and human beings that was a hallmark of
César Manrique´s style, and which is also one of the key considerations
behind Lanzarote´s status as a UNESCO Biosphere Zone.
It didn´t take Jason long to find the correct place for the installation. While
Lanzarote is surrounded by water, much of it is volatile. The museum site,
however, needed to be calm and accessible. Potential sites such as Puerto
del Carmen had currents that were too strong and frequent underwater drop-
Images from Jason’s projects in the Caribbean
offs, but the flat, level sandbanks that lie in the protected Bocaina Strait turned
out to be perfect.
In fact, Jason thinks that his work will help to return life to what is a fairly
sterile area in terms of undersea life: “There´s no real ecosystem there right
now,” he says, “just vast expanses of sand. The whole point of my work is to
create a living environment, a work of art that changes naturally every year as
the sculptures are slowly colonized by marine life forms.”
The Gazette | January 2015 | 27