Enshittification, 2025
Jason deCaires Taylor
Polystyrene, Foam, Stainless steel, Gold paint
This site-specific installation depicts a golden vulture — both idol and indictment. Cast in cheap polystyrene and coated in gold paint, it mirrors the hollowness of the values it represents. Installed near sites marked by excess and exploitation, the vulture becomes a silent witness to capitalism’s decay. Its stillness recalls the seductive allure of power — radiant, commanding, yet fundamentally flawed. The work positions money as the new faith of our time — an invisible religion shaping and corrupting every facet of modern life. From oil companies burning the planet to water companies poisoning rivers, from pharmaceuticals holding health to ransom to the entwined powers of technology and politics consolidating control over our lives, it embodies a system that threatens both the stability of our planet and the slow unravelling of civilisation itself.
On Site
About the Artist
Jason deCaires Taylor (b. 1974) is an award-winning sculptor, environmentalist, and professional underwater photographer. A graduate of the London Institute of Arts (1998), he gained international acclaim for creating the world’s first underwater sculpture park in Grenada and the first underwater art museum in Mexico. Over the past 20 years, he has installed more than 1,200 public sculptures across the world’s oceans. His works function as artificial reefs, fostering marine life and sparking dialogue between art, science, and conservation.
The works examine how sculpture can engage with ecological processes, evolving in response to endemic marine life, shifting light conditions, water viscosity, and alternative perspectives offered by the underwater realm. They engender an idea of regeneration and recovery, and implicate the viewer in the inevitability of change.
Taylor has been described as the Jacques Cousteau of the art world.
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