Adorably radical?: CUTE at Somerset House
As toys and cats overrun Somerset House, what can this new exhibition tell us about cuteness in the contemporary world?
By
Shin Hui Lee
January 29, 2024
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
“Cute’s potential to change our way of being could be more radical than we might ever have imagined,” says Claire Catterall, senior curator of the Somerset House’s latest exhibition CUTE. As can be gleaned from its title, the exhibition is an exploration of the rise and all-consuming influence of cuteness in contemporary culture. From a Hello Kitty disco to a slumber-party room, to a video games arcade, we are whisked away on an emotive journey through cuteness, uncovering its remarkable yet complex power every step of the way.
It all begins with kittens. As we enter the first room, we are greeted by Louis Wain’s famous psychedelic cats - all fluffy, big-eyed and larger-than-life - poised to leap from their canvases at any moment, while Karen Kilimnik’s pink and blue pastels form a bubble of perfect serenity around the gentle feline. Andy Holden’s ceramic cat collection (inherited from his late grandmother) is a particular joy, as we tiptoe and crane our necks to catch a glimpse of each of the 300 wondrously expressive figurines. This is, of course, the version of cute we all know: sweet, lovable, innocent and undeniably coo-worthy.
For Catterall, such cultural ubiquity is what has also led to the rapacious commodification of cuteness over the last several decades. Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition doubles as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the ambassador of cuteness herself: Hello Kitty. A shrine to Hello Kitty paraphernalia lines the walls, including countless plushies, TV and radio sets, luggage and coin purses, spam cartons (25% less sodium!) and Heinz pasta cans. As we walk through a perfectly Instagrammable cut-out of Hello Kitty’s face, we are plunged into a disco fashioned after the children’s character, complete with mirror ball, reflective walls and hyper-pop tunes blaring ceaselessly.
All of this is good fun but the longer we linger, the hollower everything starts to feel. We gaze into the oh-so-adorable eyes of the neon-lit Hello Kitty DJ, only to find ourselves confronted by the inherently capitalist soul that lies within. With over 50,000 product lines available in more than 130 countries, Hello Kitty is estimated to be worth $7 billion, making her the most profitable bastion of Sanrio’s empire. “We take Hello Kitty as a celebrity, so you have to think of yourself as a manager of an entertainment company,” says Caroline Tsang, chief operating officer for Sanrio in Asia. “Hello Kitty is number one.”
Things get weirder when we are reminded that she is not even a cat, but a little girl named “Kitty White” who “lives in a London suburb and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.” How do we reconcile this anthropomorphic backstory against her entirely unrealistic design? She’s mouthless, weighs an alarming “three apples” and never ages past the third grade, yet she’s supposed to be one of us? By removing Hello Kitty entirely from the possibility of agency, her makers facilitate instead a boundless array of connections, projections and interpretations, transforming her into a receptacle of meaning ready to take on whatever form the consumer desires. The exhibition acknowledges this tension but ultimately remains reticent in unravelling it - resting instead upon a broader capitalist critique that fails to identify it as intertwined specifically here with gender.
Of course, the ascension of Hello Kitty must be understood as part of the emergence of kawaii culture in the 1990s. The rest of the first floor is dedicated to manga comics, popular Japanese art and fashion magazines like FRUITS and various goods and stationery aimed at young girls. CUTE attributes much of the original success of kawaii to Japan’s economic downfall, pinpointing our natural human instinct to seek out places of safety during times of uncertainty. In Catterall’s words, “[Cuteness] says we can be anything and everything we want to be, but its playful ambiguity also helps us to navigate an increasingly overwhelming and complicated ‘now’.”
This is a thread that the exhibition picks up in greater detail upstairs, as it grapples with the paradoxical nature of cuteness. Catterall describes cute as a “Trojan horse”, referencing its dual ability to “thrive within the neoliberal capitalist structures that spawned it, while at the same time undermining its very foundations with its ability to not only challenge the norm but to transform it.” Indeed, the artists featured here co-opt cuteness as a means of expressing their own increasingly tangled identities and issues.
Mike Kelley’s teenage mugshot immediately tarnishes the fairytale exterior of youth. By re-appropriating his once-loved stuffed toys as criminals, he challenges the very notion of childhood as an uncorrupted site of innocence. Flannery Silva’s imposing steel ballet slippers expose the conflicting forces embedded in this much-fetishised emblem of girlhood - on one hand, evocative of grace and femininity, on the other, rife with abuse and suffering. Ed Fornieles weaponises cuteness itself in his film Adventures in Symbolic Love Tyranny, as his high-pitched, chubby-cheeked NFT characters Finis ironically discusses how cuteness arises by “professing its own demure and complete powerlessness,” and in doing so “gains power over and directs all interactions with it.”
Does the exhibition succeed in proving the “radical” potential of cute to change our way of being? To an extent. It’s an ambitious mission, and while it perhaps does not quite reach “radical”, the exhibition does deftly reveal the myriad ways in which we can harness the power of cute to challenge and change the world around us.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that cute is here to stay. With that in mind, Catterall and her team do a mighty job of highlighting the contexts and nuances of the phenomenon. Never leaning too heavily either into the saccharine or the cynical, CUTE triumphs in always finding the sweet spot.
CUTE is on view at Somerset House until 14th April 2024.
