INCREDIBLE UNDERWATER ART TRIP: MALDIVES
We never have enough time for art! While spending time in museums, galleries, festivals, fairs, and at outdoor installations is so inspiring and rewarding, it’s hard to squeeze as much as we want into our busy schedules. So, we always make sure to include art on our vacations, wherever we roam.
If you love diving and you love art, make room at the top of your vacation travel bucket list for a trip to the brand new Coralarium, the world’s first intertidal art gallery, located in the Maldives.
Created by British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor for the Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi, this semi-submerged art gallery holds 30 living sculptures, forming an artificial reef. Coral and other marine species have already begun to populate the reef, creating artistic elements of their own, adding onto the sculptures -- so the whole art gallery is constantly evolving. Fish and other creatures move freely through the sculptures.
“It's almost like an inverse zoo,” deCaires Taylor says. “In cities, we go into space and look at caged animals. Whereas this is almost like we’re the tourists, but we’re in the cage and the marine life can come and go and look at us. It’s almost a reversal of how we interact with wildlife.”
DeCaires Taylor is also an environmentalist and professional underwater photographer. His permanent site-specific works span several continents and focus on submerged and tidal marine environments. Over the past 10 years he has created several large-scale underwater museums and sculpture parks, featuring over 850 life-size sculptures.
In 2006, deCaires Taylor created the world’s first underwater sculpture park, situated off the west coast of Grenada in the West Indies. Now listed as one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic.
In 2009, deCaires Taylor co-founded MUSA (Museo Subacuático de Arte), a vast collection of over 500 of his sculptural works, installed between Cancun and Isla Mujeres in Mexico.
Other major projects include Museo Atlantico (2016), the first underwater contemporary art museum in the Atlantic Ocean, located 14 meters below the surface of the ocean off the coast of Lanzarote, Spain.
Coralarium took about nine months to build. Its frame is constructed from eco-friendly pH-neutral marine steel that reflects the sky and the ocean, changing as the light changes throughout the day and night. It is filled with sculptures made of eco-friendly concrete. Its collective weight is about 200 tons.
At the top of the gallery, which sits above the waterline, black human figures sit on the roof, reaching up towards the sky. More figures stand inside the gallery, partially submerged at different levels, depending on the tides. Still more figures are fully submerged and constantly surrounded by marine life.
The humanoid sculptures were created from casts of real people, many of whom are native Maldivians. They are joined by sculptures of native plants and corals, including banyan trees, screw pines, and staghorn corals.
DeCaires Taylor strategically planted real coral among the sculptures to kickstart the reef’s organic growth.
“Most of the works also feature root systems, symbolic of the dependence of humans on the natural environment, a connection to place,” deCaires Taylor says. “White fragments of dead calcium coral washed up by the sea form the shapes of bones, ingrained into the surfaces, aiming to show how the coral reefs are part of the Maldivian DNA.”
When you first approach Coralarium, you enter via a long pool which serves as a pathway, flanked by underwater poplar trees and planted coral. It leads you to a submerged staircase which then leads you to the gallery. An expert guide from the Fairmont Maldives, gives you the down low on both the sculptures and marine life as you descend and immerse.
This is art with a purpose. DeCaires aims to encourage environmental awareness, instigate social change, and connect more people with breathtaking natural beauty of ocean reefs.
To learn more about Jason deCaires Taylor and to get information that will help you plan your visits, check out his Website, Instagram, and Facebook. And watch his fascinating TED Talk.
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