The Cabildo has confirmed that it plans to reinstall the “Rising Tide” sculptures by British artist Jason de Caires Taylor in Arrecife, although not at their original location at the foot of the Castillo de San José.
€200,000 will be spent on the project, which the Cabildo claims will come out of central government funds devoted to tourist sustainability projects.
The sculptures of four horsemen, with horses’ heads replaced by oil well pistons, is a comment on global warming and is intended to be placed between high and low tidelines, so that the sculptures are submerged at high tide and visible at low tide. The Cabildo says they will be placed somewhere “with visibility from Arrecife towards the sea.”
The sculptures have become the subject of a long-running political feud and were removed by the Socialist-led ruling group at the Cabildo in 2019. Socialists claim the sculptures do not reflect the artistic heritage of Lanzarote and are unoriginal, being a copy of an earlier work on the Thames Estuary.
The Cabildo is also considering re-opening De Caires’ Atlantic Museum, the underwater sculpture park at Playa Blanca which was removed from the island’s list of tourist attractions in 2019, although it is still visited by diving clubs. Héctor Fernández of the Cabildo said “work is being done to correct the financial deficit” that the museum had.
