No matter what country it is or what nationality, artists all over the world are trying to stand out from the mass and surprise the world with their work. And very often they succeed in achieving this goal. Finland and Mexico are on different sides of the globe, but both countries have very strange sculpture parks that are visited by millions of people every year.

Finland and Creepy Art

Want to see one of the strangest parks of sculptures in Europe? Then travel to Parikala, in eastern Finland, near the border with Russia. It may be hard to believe, but this park was created by one person, Veijo Rönkkönen. For about 50 years, he created human sculptures and exposed them in half an acre on his plot. After his death in 2010, he left about 500 of these strange concrete sculptures.

Many of the sculptures depict human figures doing something in different poses. The artist has said that these are monuments to his former body. Sculptures cannot be called exactly copies of a real human being. These concrete people seem a little horrible: sunken eyes, very slender bodies, crazy facial expressions. Maybe it is not very nice to know that some sculptures even have real human teeth.

The artist Rönkkönen was considered a local freak. He worked as a regular employee in one paper factory in a small town, but he was educated and loved to read books. Although he never took tourists out of his park, he was uninterested in the tourism business and all things related to it. The artist refused to exhibit his works outside his backyard. After his death, the park was fully open to visitors.

Mexico and Underwater Art

The museum in Cancun, Mexico, surprised even the most experienced travelers because the visitors are offered to put on diving equipment and dive into a depth of 6 meters, where the museum exhibits about 500 sculptures underwater. The idea to create an underwater museum came after seeing that tourists are interested in diving and damaging coral reefs, Jaime Gonzales Canto, director of the National Marine Park, decided to create an alternative and set up a sculpture park that could lift huge tourist flows. As a result, the world’s largest underwater museum was established, where exhibits help preserve real and natural coral reefs. And by diving among the impressive sculptures, you can see how they are gradually surrounded by nature. All sculptures are made of special materials that promote the growth of corals.

Most of the sculptures in the park were created by British artist Jason de Caires Taylor. He is not only an artist, but also an environmentalist and a professional in underwater photography, presenting his works of art in an underwater sculpture park in Grenada also. The sculptures in the Underwater Museum of Cancun are in an area of ​​420 square meters, and the artworks weigh about 200 tons. It receives over 100 thousand visitors a year. The bravest visitors of the museum are invited to dive to a depth of 3-6 meters using special diving equipment. Those who do not want to dive so deeply are offered to take the opportunity to go scuba diving with a tube. Or admire sculpture in a boat with a glass bottom.