You have to scuba dive to visit this art museum in Spain
Step inside Museo Atlantico, Europe's first underwater art museum located 14 metres below the water in Lanzarote, Spain.
The permanent museum was designed by British eco-sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor. There are over 300 works spread over 12 installations.
The museum, which was built over two years and takes up 50 x 50 metres of "lifeless sandy seabed," aims to "create a strong visual dialogue between art and nature" by creating a "large scale artificial reef."
The first parts of the museum were installed in February 2016, and are all built with environmentally-friendly materials.
According to the museum, the initial pieces "have already experienced a significant increase in the levels of generation and abundance of species, and are already being frequented by angel sharks, shoals of barracuda and sardines, octopus, marine sponges and the occasional butterfly stingray."
The installations include a 100 tonne 30 metre-long wall, an underwater botanical sculpture garden, and over 200 lifesize human figures in a whirlwind formation.
They were installed by hardworking scuba divers.
The pieces are incredibly chilling.
This one, titled "The Portal," forms part of the underwater botanical garden. It shows "a hybrid animal/human sculpture looking into a large square mirror, which reflects the moving surface of the ocean."
It is "intended to portray water within water, an interface or looking glass into another world, the blue world," according to the museum. "The mirror is elevated on a series of cactus forms which contain a series of small compartments and “living stations” designed to attract octopus, sea urchins and juvenile fish."
Meanwhile, "Crossing the Rubicon" is made up of 35 figures watching towards an underwater entrance within a 30-metre long wall to represent "a boundary between two realities and a portal to the Atlantic Ocean."
The four metre high wall is made of part industrial and part organic materials. According to the museum, the wall "emphasises that the notions of ownership and territories are irrelevant to the natural world. In times of increasing patriotism and protectionism the wall aims to remind us that we cannot segregate our oceans, air, climate or wildlife as we do our land and possessions."
"To cross the Rubicon is to pass a point of no return. The work aims to mark 2017 as a pivotal moment, a line in the sand and reminder that our world’s oceans and climate are changing and we need to take urgent action before its too late."
"Deregulated" shows businessmen in suits playing on a children's see-saw in an effort to "demonstrate the insouciance and arrogance of the corporate world towards the natural world."
According to the museum, "the sea-saw references a petroleum extraction pump, a comment on the control of these fossil fuels and their unregulated use."
Made using a mold from a local fisherman, "The Immortal Pyre" represents a traditional funeral pyre using concrete sticks.
The last exhibition in the museum, "The Human Gyre," was created using a template which was then removed.
It is made up of over 200 life-size human figures in a circle made for marine species to inhabit. "The artistic installation reminds us that we have evolved from marine life, and are all subject to the movements and will of the ocean," the museum says.
"The piece embodies our naked vulnerability to its inherent power, and our fragility in the face of its cycles and immense force. It provides the oxygen we breathe, it regulates our climate and it provides a vital source of nutrition to millions of people."
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