Qualla: Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park

Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park: Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Twenty-six children stand in a ring on the ocean floor, holding hands, facing outward into the current. They are concrete, cast from the bodies of real Grenadian children, and they have been standing here since 2007 - long enough for fire coral to creep across their shoulders, for parrotfish to nest in the spaces between their fingers, for the Caribbean to begin claiming them as its own. This is Vicissitudes, the centerpiece of the Molinere Bay Underwater Sculpture Park, and it is simultaneously one of the most haunting and hopeful things human beings have ever put into the sea.

Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park: Art That Asks to Be Consumed

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor had a specific problem to solve when he arrived in Grenada in 2006. Hurricane Ivan had torn through in 2004, and Hurricane Emily followed in 2005, devastating the coral reefs along the island's west coast. Only 10 to 15 percent of the seabed...

Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park: Faces from the Community

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What makes Molinere Bay different from a simple artificial reef is that every figure has a face - and every face belongs to someone real. Taylor took life casts of local Grenadians, pressing alginate molds against their skin, capturing their expressions in plaster before translat...

Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park: The Conversation Nobody Planned

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Taylor insists that Vicissitudes - the ring of children - was never intended as a reference to the Middle Passage, the transatlantic slave trade route that carried millions of enslaved Africans through these same Caribbean waters. Yet the image of dark figures standing on the oce...

Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park: A Reef Reborn

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The park is accessible by boat from St. George's, just three kilometers north of the capital, or from Grand Anse Bay on Grenada's west coast. Scuba divers, snorkelers, and passengers on glass-bottom boats visit daily. But the real visitors are the ones Taylor designed for: the co...