Ida: Bizarre Mermaid Sculptures by Olivia Erlanger

Imagine going to a laundromat in LA and finding some glittering mermaid tails spinning in the machines. That’s how this amazing and weird art piece by LA based artist Olivia Erlanger began in 2016.

“Ida is compromised of three mermaid tails installed in the laundryzone in Los Angeles’ mid city neighborhood. Mermaids are a kind of pre-gender or genderless archetype, a representation of a chimeric existence that I feel we each take on as different environmental pressures effect transformations. When they are presented as female, mermaids bring up many questions of mobility, not only in a physical sense, but also ones around agency. Ariel for example gave up her voice to walk on land. This kind of psychological voice loss is mirrored in freuds, Ida Bauer, who was one of the first recorded cases of female hysteria. Hysteria, as we all know is not necessarily real, and yet the trope of hysterical woman, persists. The project has been installed at Daelim Museum, Kistefos, and is part of the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art,” she wrote.

More: Olivia Erlanger