Planet M’s Sleeping Beauties is the title given to a remarkable – almost heart-rending – installation by Myrdin Sommer at her current region, Planet M.
I’ve covered Myrdin’s work as an artist/region designer with the March 2026 iteration of Planet M (see: A trip to Planet M’s Tula in Second Life) and her 2025 build, Drone Haven (see: A Drone Haven in Second Life), both of which I enjoyed. However, Planet M’s Sleeping Beauties is very different in theme, tone and depth, being wrapped around Myrdin’s own life experience.
This is made clear by the introduction to the installation, which reads in part:
I built this place from my mother’s heart. I wanted 6 children, but they were never born. I carry this sorrow with me always … I wanted to have children of my own so badly that I often thought, all those children in the world who are seen as ‘flawed’ in some way and whom no one loves, bring them to me, I will love them, and so I did. And so I began to sculpt children who were not perfect.
– From the introduction to Sleeping Beauties
The result of this is a remarkable exploration of coming to terms with Nature’s denial of a heartfelt desire – to give birth, to hold, love, and nurture one’s own children – and to seek a form of catharsis for that denial through artistic expression. At the same time, Planet M’s Sleeping Beauty might also been seen as a layered commentary on modern society.
The installation begins with an Experience-led journey (be sure to accept the local Experience on arrival, make sure the HUD attaches (top right of the viewer’s window and that you are using the Shared Environment), in which the symbolism is clear from start to finish (penetration, the nourishment of life within the human body and birth). This delivers us – and I use “delivers” here intentionally and without pun – to an alien landscape which is itself somehow fitting given the subject of the installation, around which are six remarkable sculptures of babies.
These are by no means perfect, as is obvious from the start. But they are clearly vulnerable and deserving of love, carrying with them a beauty known to their mother. As such, they embody Myrdin’s almost life-long desire to have children of her own or to have had the opportunity to raise those who otherwise might have passed through infancy and childhood without the love of a mother or parents.
In and of itself, this gives these sculptures depth and beauty. I take no shame in saying that as one who passed on the opportunity to have children of my own, seeing these tiny (in terms of their size compared to my human self) raised an ache in my heart for the choice I made earlier in life. Just how much harder must it be for someone to be denied that choice from the outset?
Then there is the wider commentary contained within the installation, which Myrdin notes in her introduction.
Much of modern society is not pleasant. Not only do we seem hell bent on wrecking the planet for the generations who follow us, some have reached a point where even babies are more a commodity than a living being, judge for how well they accessorise; self and style matter more than care and nurture. Then there is the fact that within a society which by now should know better, there is an idolatry promotion of the perfect, the beautiful, the ideal which carries with it the subtext that those who fall short – particularly visually – should be at best made aware perfection is not for them or at worst, be shunned and ignored.
And for this I say thank God for people like Myrdin; through her and this installation we can always be reminded that everyone born into this world is deserving of love – and we can all do with learning to love all that is different.
Slurl Details
- Planet M’s Sleeping Beauties (Planet M, rated Moderate)
