Mermaid Mayhem

Cissi Efraimsson Explains it All

Call her a mermaid lord, puppet wizard, or punk princess—Cissi Efraimsson is many magical beings in one. Oscillating between art, film and music, she’s the first animator to anthropomorphize salmon sushi. Drawn to sea dwellers, her new film imagines salty mermaids in captivity, each of them hand-crafted and scripted by the artist. Cissi is also a lead member of the loveable Swedish punk band, Vulkano, and her ceramic sculptures feel like film stills—the life she breathes into her work is fantastically relatable and truly supernatural.

Kristin Farr: Tell me about Sea Angels.

Cissi Effraimson: It’s a short film in stop motion, a mockumentary following three mermaids from different generations. It takes place in the future, where mermaids suddenly start to appear along the coast, and the humans are, like, “Oh my god, they’re real!” The mermaids have been hiding all these years, but because of pollution, they can’t stay in the ocean anymore. They come up to the shore, and it’s total chaos. Some people love them, and some want to eat them; it becomes a thing with mermaid meat and mermaid eggs. And there are nature activists and protestors who want to save the mermaids! So they finally get shelter and food in a pool in LA where they live from then on.

My story takes place 20 years after that’s all happened. They’ve been there a long time, and there are younger mermaids who have never seen the ocean, and who are totally humanized. The pool has become like a Sea World where humans can pay to party with the mermaids or see them do tricks. Some of the older mermaids are, like, “Fuck you, man,” and a lot of them are alcoholics. It’s a whole world.

What’s a mermaid’s drink of choice?