Anthropocene

Taylor was thrilled to find about 100 lobsters living at the feet of one of his pieces in Cancun. “But a week later, every single lobster was gone,” he said. “They’d been taken out by fishermen in the night.” Taylor tried again in 2011 with this piece, a cast of a Volkswagen Beetle. “We wanted to create a lobster city that fishermen couldn’t get their hooks into,” he said. The sculpture is hollow, but it still weighed nine tons — which made getting it to its location a challenge. And for two years, no lobsters. “I thought, ‘Ah, it hasn’t worked,’” says Taylor. “But I went a year ago and it had 80 lobsters inside. I turned on my torch, and just saw thousands of feelers. It felt really good.” Note: the child crying on the windshield of this sculpture has nothing to do with the recent Volkswagen scandal. “The piece is about what we’re leaving to future generations,” says Taylor.