Love Letter to France: Cannes’ Underwater Museum

Carol takes a deep dive into the world of art at Cannes’s underwater museum.

Two or three years ago when I was filming Carol Drinkwater’s Secret Provence for Britain’s Channel 5, we shot an episode that has really stayed with me. It was an experience I probably wouldn’t have achieved without the backing of a television network even though I had been itching to visit ever since I first read about it. The Cannes Underwater Eco-Museum is an extraordinary museum created by the British artist Jason deCaires Taylor.

In all the years we have lived on our olive farm overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the strait between the two Îles de Lérins – Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat – was always chock-a-block with anchored yachts during the summer season. You could, quite literally, step from one yacht to the next and cross from island to island. It was a horrendous traffic jam. No one could swim there and the detritus left when the boats set sail was shocking.

Underwater art

Eventually, the Cannes municipality decided to do something about it. Jason deCaires Taylor was already gaining a reputation for his maritime sculptures. Each of his underwater museums promises in a unique way to raise awareness about the dangers facing all marine ecosystems. However, he had not yet created anything in the Mediterranean. I believe that there was a bidding war as to where he might set his first Med work, and Cannes won.

What Jason has created is remarkable. Each sculpture sits on the seabed; each is a giant mask some two metres high and weighing ten tonnes. The masks are an echo of theatre, film and the Cannes Film Festival. He has modelled each image on the face of a Cannes resident, the models ranging in age from seven (a schoolgirl) to 78 (a retired fisherman).

Otherworldy adventure

The water these days is so much cleaner. No yachts are allowed within a certain distance of the museum. In order to take me to the site and film there, we needed permission from the Mayor of Cannes’s office. We hired a small boat, which ferried us to the point beyond which boats can no longer enter. From there, donning masks, snorkels and flippers, we descended into the sea and swam to the site. It was pretty windy and the current was unexpectedly strong. In my younger days I was a passionate scuba diver and have dived many of our world’s seas, but that was a while ago. Our director and his assistant were beating their flippers hard, working against the current while transporting cameras. I was talking to the cameras, explaining what the ambitions of this extraordinary park were, all while trying not to swallow large mouthfuls of salty water. I feared the scene might fail, but once we arrived where these huge masks were silently settled on the seabed, I knew that we were witnessing something really special. It was haunting too, rather like finding myself in a David Lynch film.

I sank beneath the surface of the water and came face to face with the first stature. There were small fish swimming in and about its form; coral was beginning to grow there, seaweed moving. And that was Jason’s intention: that the water, now rid of all shipping and human intervention, can revitalise and become a home for all marine life. The museum is open to the public. Pack your snorkels, take your children. It’s an unforgettable aquatic adventure.

Carol Drinkwater is an award-winning actress and the best-selling author of The Olive Farm series. Her latest work is An Act of Love, set in WWII France.

From France Today Magazine