cute & curious
The viral exhibition Cute was on its last week at Somerset House. wonder | wander | women have always been fascinated by kawaii culture since Hello Kitty and FRUITS Magazine. We eagerly joined our friends and their excited kids for a wander through Cute land.
The exhibit was sponsored by Sanrio to celebrate their icon Hello Kitty’s 50th anniversary and the Sanrio room did not disappoint. There were photo ops, merchandise of every kind, and the history of Sanrio’s iconic kitty, whose full name is Kitty White and who is a Londoner — just like us!
We took pictures of the kids going nuts at the wall of plushies. As our friend’s Sanrio-obsessed daughter recounted every relationship between every character — it was deja'vu to our own childhood for the adults too.
We enjoyed tracking the timeline of Hello Kitty — picking out how her look evolved through the years. Especially marking the years that each of us were born.
We recognised toys, bags and goodies from our childhood and young adulthood — like Hello Kitty toasters, boomboxes and the whole gang of Kitty and her friends.
It was a familiar world of characters we grew up with — adults and kids alike were drawn into the magical environments. Sanrio and the curators had created a Disney World atmosphere of mascots, bright colours and yes, cuteness. Complete with a Hello Kitty disco for forever at heart kids.
Before Hello Kitty was born and during every year of her adorable reign, fans were reading, creating and spreading the sparkly-eyed heroines of shoujo manga — a genre of comics in Japan emphasising the inner world of girls’ daily lives and emotions.
Ads by illustrators Junichi Nakahara and Macoto Takahashi inspired a generation of women to create gentle characters with soft hair and large eyes — their tender vulnerable selves vividly exposed to the world.
This vulnerability is one of the core features of Cute, and of cute culture itself. “I want people to feel warm and healed when they see my works,” Takahashi said.
Many artists and fans of the kawaii (Japanese for cute) aesthetic do talk about healing — their works are about seeking comfort in a world of harsh or overwhelming realities.
One room was a pink cushioned chamber invoking a teenage girl’s sleepover, with gentle synth-pop playing, curated by singer and performance artist Hannah Diamond.
Another room was full of video games, instead of first-person shooters and fantasy battles it featured playing dress up, monster romance, and quiet rainy days.
Cute culture is bold yet self-conscious — eyeing each other in the mirror or the selfie cam before engaging. It is self-referential — drawing from many cultures and eras. Punk, gothic Lolita, Victorian, the nostalgia of childhood and insecurity of early adulthood.
The collections were divided into categories: Cry Baby, Play Together, Monstrous Other, Sugar-Coated Pill and Hypersonic. Among the sculptures and videos of performances were beloved commercial products like My Little Pony, the Care Bears, and even the Duolingo owl.
Contemporary artists were also invited to create pieces that explored what “cute” meant for them — creating photo montages, videos and animations, or sculptures of fantastical and strange creatures in candy colours.
There is a darkness to Cute that comes with every escapist culture as well. The cuteness was sometimes uncanny or sexualised. Oftentimes a thin veneer over ugly realities like fascism, drug use or childhood trauma. Cute culture is comforting, but it can also be a narcotic.
Some artists use cuteness itself to coat darker stories with a softer edge — revealing touchy topics like isolation, or gentling trauma memories without rebuffing audiences — creating modern fables for audiences.
It was a thought-provoking exhibition under all the hype and shiny visuals. Seeing it with children gave us a perspective we may have glossed over on our own.
Our kids and their exclamations, requests and questions, and their detailed delights in Sanrio’s characters and stories, added another layer of meaning to our exhibit experience.
After all the analysis and critique, we dialed it back down and joined in the fresh perspectives of our young generation.
Originally published at https://wonderwanderwomen.blogspot.com.
