A visit to a mysterious sculpture park in Belize

I visited a sculpture park during my recent trip to Belize.  The park Poustinia was once a cattle ranch has been transformed into a magical sculpture park during 1980s. Artists from England to Uruguay have contributed to this brilliant environmental project where the art is abandoned to be surrendered and taken over by the patient nature. Wood decays, metal rusts, everything goes back to where it started reminding me of our own lifes.

"Returned Parquet" was one of my favorite art pieces.  It is a strong piece on the removal of mahogany trees during the colonial period by a Wales artist. It is literally a mahogany parquet floor laid out on the ground, "reclaimed" from Wales and "returned to the Belizean rain forest" to be taken back to its origins gradually.

"The Watcher," by Guyana artist, Winslow Craig, is a serious judging face sculpted into a sapodilla tree. It watches us with a deep concern as if it is criticizing the destroying way of living we carry on.

Next was the eerie sculpture of a young girl in a praying position in the middle of a dried pool. Here is the description on this creative piece: The girl is kneeling on a flat stone and in her hands she holds a string, at the end of the string a buoy has been tied. Surrounding the statue are 25 concrete balls, which were dyed with a red pigmentation. All the elements are in a pond, which is usually dry but floods during the wet months of the rainy season allowing the art piece to remain submerged under water. The piece will still be visible, as the water remains crystal clear most of the time.

All this art left for an eternal change  in this damp landscape left me thinking about the way I live: am I doing all I can to make the world a better place for our children?