CUTE: An Exhibition Exploring the Irresistible Rise of Cuteness

Embankment Galleries, South Wing     
General admission £18.50 (concessions, child and family tickets also available), half-price tickets for 25s and under on select Tuesdays   

25 January – 14 April 2024

EXHIBITION OVERVIEW 

• Somerset House presents the first major exhibition to explore the extraordinary and complex power of cuteness in contemporary culture, featuring works by over 50 artists and contributors, alongside culturally significant objects. 
   
• CUTE presents works by contemporary artists who use cuteness to explore their own identities and existential responses to the world around them. 
   
• The exhibition delves into five key themes: Cry Baby, Play Together, Monstrous Other, Sugar-Coated Pill and Hypersonic, which aim to unpack cute’s many guises. 
   
• Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Hello Kitty, CUTE will feature a disco, and a rare display of Hello Kitty memorabilia. 
   
• Immersive experiences will showcase cuteness across diverse mediums, including a visual and sonic music installation inspired by teenage sleepovers by Hannah Diamond.  
   
• Other new commissions for the exhibition from artists including Ed Fornieles, Sian Fan, Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Sean-Kierre Lyons and Bart Seng Wen Long. 
   
• A video games arcade will showcase how artists and independent game designers use cuteness within their work.   
   
• CUTE takeovers animate spaces around Somerset House, including a flag by Sean Kierre Lyons, a Hello Kitty-inspired Cute Coffee Shop by Artbox Café and a large-scale Hello Kitty sculpture by Hattie Stewart, commissioned in partnership with Sanrio. 

In January 2024 Somerset House presents CUTE, a landmark exhibition exploring the irresistible force of cuteness in contemporary culture. From emojis to internet memes, video games to plushie toys, food to loveable robotic design, cuteness has taken over our world.  

CUTE brings together contemporary artworks, including new artist commissions, presented alongside cultural phenomena from music, fashion and toys, to video games and social media, to examine the world’s embrace of cute culture and how it has become such an influential measure of our times.  

Presented in partnership with Sanrio, the exhibition will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s most iconic and ubiquitous figures, Hello Kitty, featuring a dedicated plushie space, immersive disco and display of Hello Kitty products throughout the decades, including rare and unique items from private collectors and the official Sanrio archives.    

Contributing artists include Mark Leckey, Sean-Kierre Lyons, AYA TAKANO, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Nayland Blake, Cosima von Bonin, Hannah Diamond, Ed Fornieles, Juliana Huxtable, Rachel Maclean, Julien Ceccaldi, Paige K. B., Isaac Lythgoe, Alake Shilling, Wong Ping, Liv Preston, CFGNY, Ram Han, Maggie Lee, Bunny Rogers, Flannery Silva, Andy Holden, plus Somerset House Studios artists Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Sin Wai Kin and Sian Fan.   

Claire Catterall, Senior Curator at Somerset House, said: “Cute is undeniably the most prominent aesthetic of our times. Yet, it has only now begun to be taken seriously. Like a tiny kitten waiting to pounce, its power and influence has slowly crept up on us and today its adorable aesthetic infiltrates almost every aspect of our daily lives. But as it saturates our digitally mediated age, cuteness feeds and compels us in ways that suggest there is so much more to it than its adorable and seemingly harmless exterior might imply. Morally ambiguous and sometimes paradoxical, its power lies not only in its ability to challenge the norm, but to transform it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of contemporary artists and musicians who use cute as a key register, exploring its complexity and meaning to shape their own practice. I hope this exhibition will delight and surprise in equal measure – rather like cuteness itself – and show that cute may not only help us to process an increasingly overwhelming and complicated world but might also have the radical potential to change our way of being.” 

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS 

CUTE’S Cat Avatar and Kawaii  

The exhibition’s introduction to the culture of cute opens with a celebration of the cat. Riffing off a quote from Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, who when asked to name one use of the internet that he did not anticipate and answered with a single word – ‘kittens’, visitors are invited to explore how cats have been at the forefront of cute’s march to global domination.    

Here, visitors can encounter Louis Wain’s famous depictions of cats from the late 19th to early 20th century, which marked a shift in public perception of cats as working animals to lovable pets with very human characteristics; Harry Pointer’s The Brighton Cats series of small postcards from the 1870s, which allowed cuteness to proliferate and reach ever expanded audiences through the birth of photography and mass production techniques. Contemporary responses include Andy Holden’s Cat-tharsis, consisting of a collection of feline figurines bequeathed by the artist’s late grandmother, a meditation on the role of cats in culture, and Karen Kilimnik’s The cat sitting in its favourite basket out in the blizzard, the Himalaya, looking back to the tradition of Romantic painting, yet positioning itself within a renewed moment of cultural sincerity, which is the hallmark of cuteness today.  

As part of its exploration of the early beginnings of cuteness, CUTE will also spotlight the development of the Japanese culture of cuteness ‘kawaii’. Featuring artefacts rarely exhibited in the UK, including printed materials, figurines, illustrated handkerchiefs, sketchbooks and more from the archive of the Yayoi Museum in Tokyo, CUTE charts kawaii’s origins in the design of products from the 1910s to the 1950s geared towards schoolgirls and young women as consumers, which incorporated western motifs such as mushrooms and castles, and depicted a romanticised idea of girlhood. CUTE also foregrounds the rise of Japan’s female illustrators of the 1960s, who challenged the innocent cuteness expressed by their male predecessors, adding elements of fun and flirtation to their work. Artists featured will include Yumeji Takehisa, Kaichi Kobayashi, Katsudi Matsumoto, Junichi Nakahara, Rune Naito, Macoto Takahashi, Setsuko Tamura, and Ado Mizumori.   

Continuing forward to the 80s and 90s, CUTE will touch on the cultural influence of Japan on the UK and US and vice versa, coalescing around a display of a girl’s bedroom, complete with posters, magazines, clothing and toys. Here, visitors will be introduced to the ways cute begins to take on a darker more critical tone, as evidenced by musicians such as Jun Togowa in Japan and bands such as Babes in Toyland in the US, as well as in the explosion of the Harajuku streetstyle in Tokyo. 

Hello Kitty’s 50th Anniversary   

Bringing us up to the end of the twentieth century will be queen of cute herself: Hello Kitty. This space will be dedicated to her in celebration of her worldwide popularity and unique ability to be familiar and appealing, yet cool and complex. Visitors will be invited to immerse themselves in a complete Hello Kitty environment with a dedicated plushie space featuring the collection of super fan Amy-Louise Allen and a Hello Kitty disco, complete with mirror ball.  

Those taking to the dancefloor can enjoy a playlist curated by American musician and producer David Gamson (formerly of pop band Scritti Politti), featuring the sweetest, shimmering pop and disco from the 60s, 70s and 80s, from The Archies to Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer to The Human League, which prefigures the electronic dance music of today’s producers who draw on the perfect precision and sparkling electronica of their forbears to create their own hyper-cute dance-pop sound.  

CUTE Commissions and Contemporary Artworks   

The exhibition’s main focus will centre around works by a selection of intergenerational artists. This will include artists whose work mined cuteness toward the end of the twentieth century as a way to explore their own experiences and subjectivities. As well as those who have grown up with the internet, cute’s natural home and have harnessed the aesthetic to explore a multitude of emotional and experimental registers; desire and longing, memory and place, ecology and capitalism, difference and belonging.   

Highlights include Japanese artist AYA TAKANO’s ethereal painting The Galaxy Inside, 2015, which depicts androgynous, large eyed-waifs suspended in a space which transcends reality, gravity and its restraints, constructing an alternative universe with a kinder, softer civilisation; Scottish artist Rachel Maclean’s 2021 mixed-media work !step on no petS Step on no pets!, which presents notes of unease and uncanniness in a twisted fairytale world, where images synonymous with sweetness and innocence disguise a darker story beneath; Nayland Blake’s The Little One explores the duality of the ‘bunny’, as a doll seen as cuddly and warm, but as an animal, seen as sexual, wild and fast moving, in a work which addresses the artist’s own identity as a non-binary multi-racial artist; and Seoul-based digital artist Ram Han’s works from her Save our souls series, which draws on her childhood memories of growing up in the cute-saturated landscape of Korea, cut through with her darker experiences of subcultural media, to create lurid digital imagescapes. A further highlight includes Mark Leckey’s 2023 video work DAZZELDARK, an odyssey of cuteness featuring brightly coloured soft fairground toys from Margate’s Dreamland, who find themselves contemplating the vast darkness of the sea.    

Popular objects, materials and memes drawn from cute’s pop cultural landscape will punctuate the space between contemporary artworks, seeking to unlock routes into the understanding of cute’s dynamic through five key themes - Cry Baby, Play Together, Monstrous Other, Sugar-Coated Pill and Hypersonic.  

Each cluster will be accompanied by a short film commission by visual artist Bart Seng Wen Long, capturing how subgenres of cute manifest in contemporary culture today, from gaming, internet memes and viral TikTok trends, to music videos, Instagram filters and more.   

Crybaby unpicks how cuteness often appears helpless and vulnerable, pulling at our heartstrings and encouraging us to have tender feelings towards it. Exhibits demonstrate the powerful attraction of this aesthetic, from Margaret Keane’s popular depictions of weeping waifs and strays, to crying figurines and toys, such as Susie Sad Eyes dolls, as well as products from the kawaii culture of Yami or ‘Sickly Cute’.  

Touching on cuteness’s inherent playfulness, Play Together, will showcase how, by inviting us to become childlike again, cuteness can provide a sanctuary from life’s anxieties and encourage a sense of belonging and community, sharing and empathy. Visitors will see artefacts and memorabilia from games such as Animal Crossing and classic toys including Tamagotchi, Sylvanian Families, and My Little Pony. A ‘Sweet Lolita’ Harajuku streetstyle outfit specially commissioned from the artist Kuniko Kato will show how the fashion is deployed to encourage kindness and friendship. 

Monstrous Other addresses cute’s darker side. Cute’s ability to shapeshift between opposites such as old and young, ugly and adorable, masculine and feminine, human and unhuman has enabled it to slip easily into the realms of the uncanny and the grotesque. On display will be objects including robotic pets, popular toys such as Furby, characters including Gloomy Bear and Sumikko Gurashi, alongside fashion from Japan’s ‘Gothic Lolita’ sub-cultural fashion community.  

Sugar-Coated Pill looks at how cuteness is often used to soften the unpalatable. From far-right extremists to big pharma, cuteness has been co-opted in propaganda machines to disguise and control its messaging. But cuteness is also used as a form of critique. As well as images of far-right propaganda and cuddly toys produced by pharmaceutical companies, on display will be artefacts from activist groups such as the Russian art collective Pussy Riot, and cuddly plushies of weapons of mass destruction from video games such as Portal.  A specially-commissioned outfit in the popular Harajuku streetstyle known as ‘Decora’ by artist Haruka Kurebayashi will show how cuteness is used as a mode of rebellion and resistance against the mundanity of society. 

Hypersonic sees post-internet cuteness take on its most exuberant form. In today’s globally connected, hyper-capitalistic world, cuteness has become accelerated, maximalist, super glossy and futuristic. This section will feature works from artists and designers such as Super Nhozagri Kingdom, Xiuching Tsay, Ashley Williams, and MSCHF which reflect this shiny new confidence and point towards cuteness’ radical potential to help us find new ways of being human.  

Hannah Diamond  

In a new commission, Perfect Dream, multidisciplinary artist Hannah Diamond presents an immersive visual and sonic music installation, inspired by a girl’s sleepover, featuring a curated collection of videos from the likes of SOPHIE, XG, Kim Petras, Marky B, Charli XCX, Carly Rae Jepsen and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and more, as well as from Diamond herself. Diamond brings her own affirmative vision of hyper pink girlhood to showcase the best of the super cute electronic dance music, which centred around the now-defunct PC Music record label and music collective.  

Games Arcade  

A video games arcade curated by Now Play This Producer Nick Murray will adjoin Diamond’s installation space. The arcade will showcase ways artists and independent game designers use cuteness to evoke feelings of joy, excitement and nostalgia, as well as tackle unexpected subjects unflinchingly. Games available to play will include Peachy Keen Games’ Calico, where the player is tasked with re-building a town’s cat café and fill it with cute and cuddly creatures and Cantusmori’s Froggy Pot, a poignant visual novel where the player must help a character dressed in a frog onesie, suffering from depression, out of a boiling pot of water.    

Catalogue  

CUTE will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by internationally respected cute scholar Dr Joshua Paul Dale, professor in the Department of English Literature and Culture at Chuo University in Tokyo, Dr Isabel Galleymore, poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at University of Birmingham, and writer and art critic Gabriella Pounds. The book is designed by Graphic Thought Facility. 

A selection of CUTE themed items, including the exhibition catalogue, will be available to buy in the gift shop and online. 

Digital Experience and Documentary 

Cute is extended into the digital world through an interactive character-creator tool, accessed via iameverythingyouwantmetobe.com. Appealing to a diverse range of ages and interests, the platform enables users to customise their own character. Produced by International Magic, the platform will be an exploration of cuteness that encourages people to express their unique and individual perspectives.  

Documentary The Power of Cute unpacks the concept of cuteness in contemporary culture, presented on Channel, Somerset House’s curated online space for art, ideas and the artistic process. The film features seven artists who use the extraordinary and complex power dynamic of cute in their work: Rachel Maclean, Ed Forneiles, Chris Zhongtian Yuan, Hattie Stewart, Ram Han, Alake Shilling. Accompanying the Somerset House exhibition, the film, directed by Yvonne Zhang shows how cuteness seeks to enhance, disrupt, and re-imagine the world we live in today. The film is available to view here.

CUTE Upgrade Yourself Takeover
Thursday 22 February 2024
 

Upgrade Yourself, Somerset House’s creative skills programme, takes over CUTE for one night only, providing emerging creatives aged 18-30 the chance to connect with likeminded individuals. The free events include development workshops, talks and networking opportunities with industry professionals, as well as free entry to the exhibition. 
 

Exhibition Design  

The exhibition is designed by award-winning architects AOC Architecture, with internationally renowned stage designer and former Somerset House Studios resident artist Chloe Lamford, and graphic design by Graphic Thought Facility.  

CUTE is curated by Claire Catterall, Senior Curator at Somerset House.