That sounds like a lot of responsibility. In my opinion Jenny Nicholson is the real chronicler of late capitalist fatigue. I’d say there is a general exhaustion as the promises of the 20th century, that of social mobility and linear (liberal) progress become increasingly less attainable. Fatigue stems from believing in these myths.
I was always in my art teacher Ms. Eskell’s room, making drawings and covered in schmatte, same as I am in my studio today. Growing at any age can feel painful, embarrassing, and awkward. While I believe we grow out of childhood I feel we all cycle through moments of adolescence. For that, I’m actually grateful. Life would be quite boring if we remained static!
I look to my own adolescence as a source of inspiration and to understand my motivations. For example, my play Humour in the Water Coolant takes direct inspiration from the idea of enchanted objects, which appear across many children’s stories. Who, as a child, wasn’t mesmerized by Lumière, the talking candelabra from Beauty and the Beast, or Chairry from Pee-wee’s Playhouse?
While there are many ways to approach my practice, ‘home’ is an approachable entrypoint because shelter is a universal need. The idea of home cuts across all languages and is a component part of the first stage of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Talking about home is extremely political, especially in the United States due to our housing crisis and a growing unhoused population that is often overlooked and remains with limited or no access to many social services. As a woman it’s almost a trope to make work about “home” or “domesticity.” Like, hello, retro! Relegating a woman artist’s practice to the domestic sphere feels similar to the same kind of subjugation women faced in the past—but tropes are ripe for subversion.
My exhibition If Today Were Tomorrow at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is specifically focused on your question “what does home mean to me.” The exhibition tries to depict the scales of home. The show uses these shifts in scale as a formal conceit, kind of zooming across and into different works: dioramas that propose alien landscapes, large-scale planet sculptures, a one-to-one representation of a living room that doubles as a screening room for my film, and on-going point of research “Appliance.”
Thank you! As to the success of the performance, I am completely indebted to the talent of the cast as well as Alexis Georgopoulos’s score. Honor, Olivier, Michelle, Aimee, Callie, Adrian, Dani—there is so much knowledge and creativity between all of them. It really allowed the parameters that I set on the page to blossom into something way beyond what was written.
My initial interest in writing a play stemmed from a desire to be present with others. I wrote it during lockdown and the idea of a future where we could be in a room with one another, breathing the same air without fear, being witness to a shared event was intoxicating and at that point in time seemingly impossible. Oh, and I love making people laugh so that’s always a win.
Humor and its evil twin, horror, exist as polar opposites on the same axis, an axis that provides relief from reality.
I’ve always been most excited by art forms that are quite democratic. This isn’t to say I want to make Disney art (although maybe I do) or Koonsian editions. And don’t get me wrong, I love more austere presentations and institutional critique, but that has never felt natural to me as a working methodology. I’ve always wanted to be able to have a child or a grandparent feel like they “get” my work. This to me is the most powerful because it means you can talk to a wider audience. I think humour plays a part in this.
My process always begins with reading and research. Sometimes this translates into sculpture or an installation, or other times it becomes a narrative project like Humour in the Water Coolant or my short film “Appliance.” This is a way of working that suits me and was forged during my first research-based project Garage. The original impetus to make the play came out of writing a series of essays, each focusing on the history of a different domestic technology. In compiling this writing I began to listen to the stories that the objects were “telling” me. The process of writing is quite different from sculpture but materially both begin in the same world of ideas.
I’m working towards my exhibition, Fan Fiction, which opens in September at Soft Opening. It’s go-time.
I don't think there's one thing in particular that I hope for; that would make the work perhaps too didactic. If people connect with the work at all, then it is a success.
Olivia Erlanger (b. 1990, New York) is a New York-based artist whose practice explores ‘American dreams and delusions’ through sculpture, writing, and filmmaking. Her recent solo exhibitions include If Today Were Tomorrow at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2024), Appliance at Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna (2022), and Home is a Body at Soft Opening, London (2020). Her group exhibitions include Nonmemory at Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2023), Dream Journal at Company Gallery, New York (2023), and The Heavy Light Show at Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022). Olivia is the author of Appliance (Wild Seeds, 2022) and co-authored Garage (MIT Press, 2018) with architect Luis Ortega Govela.
Humour in the Water Coolant cast:
Honor Swinton Byrne as ‘Sophie’ and Olivier Huband as ‘House’
with Michelle Newell as ‘Crystal’
Callie Hernandez as ‘Lamp’
Amie Francis as ‘Oven’
Dani Moseley as ‘Shower’
Adrian Pang as ‘Fridge’
