By Mali Sapsed Foster
Image by Mali Sapsed Foster
When arriving at Somerset House, it may have been a little difficult to find directions to the new CUTE exhibition; if not for the gaggle excited people (many daintily dressed in a range of pinkish hues and frills), and kids dragging their weary-looking parents down the empty halls to the entrance.
Once entering, you are overwhelmed with everything bold and pink and ‘cute’, and fundamentally opposed to the stiff archaic building that houses the exhibition.
Conglomerating contemporary artworks and cultural phenomena in the forms of fashion, music, video-games and more, CUTE attempts to examine the culture of cuteness, and according to Somerset House, “unravel cuteness' emotive charge, revealing its extraordinary and complex power and potential.”
Inside, the viral-ity of this exhibition becomes understandable – and not just from the crowds. It is quite literally a visual assault of cuteness: from the whimsical melodies playing loudly in the background to the bright pink walls lined with dolls, pictures, and magazines – and kittens, so many, many kittens.
Image by Mali Sapsed Foster
Fittingly, this exhibition spotlights the 50th anniversary of “cutes’ most iconic and ubiquitous figures, Hello Kitty”, and the bow-donning feline is the star of this show.
A rendition of the icon beckons you into the next room, huge and glaring in bright red LED that you simply cannot ignore.
Kids and adults alike ooh and ahh at its magnificence: an arch that leads you to a Hello Kitty plushie-lined room, bright and alive, with flashing lights and disco music.
The source of that music? A Hello Kitty disco room tucked behind the first, decked out with disco balls and stereo to match.
Video & images by Mali Sapsed Foster
Deeper within this exhibition, though, it becomes evident that there is an overwhelming ominousness to all this cuteness - and a sense that everything is not what it may seem. But with the visual and sensory overload, the crowds and the kids, the exhibition can be somewhat lost in the atmosphere.
“I feel like [the exhibition] is trying to do a critical look of cute, but also indulge in cute at the same time," said a 26-year-old artist and Somerset House gallery assistant, "Chris", who did not wish to be named:
“It’s kind of been caught in-between neither by doing both, you know, but also it tried to do that by targeting all audiences: kids, people who are ‘cute enthusiasts’, and also the contemporary art crowd, and they all kind of want different things from it.”
Video By Mali Sapsed Foster
Messages from the featured artists about the com-modifiable and exploitable side of ‘cute’, the radical feminism relating to the effects of cuteness and beauty standards and mental health, can be lost in the Instagram-able experience that this exhibition is selling – and the fact that kids seem to be the main audience.
Images & video by Mali Sapsed Foster
Saskia, a 25-year-old fine art student, said she enjoyed the exhibition but found it “quite chaotic at times because of all the kids running around,” and claimed, “[the parents] thought that it would be a good day out, but instead the kids are kind of going around aimlessly and making it hard for other people to appreciate everything on show.”
Chris, the Somerset House gallery assistant, agreed:
“I think it has been marketed as a very cute day out for the kids, but it’s not really a kid's exhibition; they don’t really have anything for kids to do, other than look at fluffy animals.”
“The kids aren’t gonna understand and they don’t want to either, that goes for the adults as well that are the ‘cute enthusiasts. People that have been following Hello Kitty all their lives come here – they don’t want to engage with the more sinister side of cute, and I guess why should they?” he said.
Do you think this exhibition should be marketed towards children?
Yes
No
Yes, if they attend under parental supervision
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