The Museo Subacuático de Arte (MUSA) is an art museum submerged completely underwater meant to stir emotions as well as to rehabilitate the coral reef that is its home.
Museums are being taken to new depths with Museo Subacuático de Arte, or more popularly shortened to MUSA, an art museum unlike any other in Cancun, or the world.
Founded in 2009, there are two things one should know about the museum. One, it has no paintings or relics of history typically found in museums, and two, it is completely underwater. If you're planning on paying MUSA a visit, you might need to learn how to dive at a nearby diving resort first.
(Photo: Jason deCaires Taylor)
MUSA is formed in the waters surrounding Cancun, Isla Mujeres and Punta Nizuc in Mexico. Life-sized sculptures that hauntingly resemble real people and the things we are all familiar with – office desks, a dinner table, an old Volkswagon Beetle – were lowered into the depths of the sea spanning across an area of over 420 square metres.
Most of the sculptures are works of British artist Jason deCaires Taylor, who seeks to demonstrate the interaction between art and its responding environment.
One of his installations, called The Silent Evolution, sees a small group of people immortalised in their daily humdrum – an old man sighs away at the aches in his bones and a pregnant woman caresses her belly lovingly in anticipation of meeting her baby. But what ties them all together is how coral and fish are slowly building homes on and around them, washing away the cold industrial edges of the stone material they are made of, and slowly replacing them with the vibrant colours and irregular imperfections of life.
Other installations like Inertia, which sees an obese man lazing in front of a television set with a half-eaten burger in hand, and Inheritance, that shows a young boy looking almost forlornly at a small rubble at his feet, stir emotions in the audience about life and existence. Removed from land and sunshine, these common sights of life take on a new meaning that makes one rethink their personal sense of materialism and self-fulfillment.
All of the sculptures are also meant to rehabilitate the coral reefs of the region – they are made of specialised materials that filter minerals and promote coral life. They are all fixed to the seabed to provide reef structure for marine life to colonise while also increasing the water’s biomass on a grand scale.
The museum now has over 500 permanent sculptures, a collection of works from 5 different artists including Taylor. It is divided into two galleries called Salon Manchones and Salon Mizuc respectively. The first is 8 metres deep, making it ideal for both divers and snorkelers while the second is only 4 metres deep and as such, only permitted for snorkeling.
Watch the video below for a virtual tour of the museum and how it came to be.
(Source: MUSA - Museo Subacuático de Arte)
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