Simon Fujiwara Who are the Drowned that the Little Mermaid Mourns?, 2026

Executed in acrylic, charcoal and pastel on canvas, Who are the Drowned that the Little Mermaid Mourns? depicts the Little Mermaid and the lifeless figure she mourns amid swirling waves, a mobile phone still in the drowned figure's hand. The Little Mermaid originates in Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale, in which a young mermaid rescues a shipwrecked prince from drowning and later sacrifices her voice to join the human world. The story reached its widest audience through Disney's 1989 animated film. Where Andersen's tale centers on a single rescue, the painting's title asks after those who were not saved. The phone in the drowned figure's hand points to a contemporary kind of drowning—immersion not in water but in the endless stream of the screen.