[‘Hello Kitty‘ installation at ‘CUTE’, an exhibition at Somerset House]
[Exhibits on display]
[E.T. lunchbox made by Aladdin Industries, from 1982]
[‘Star Wars the Child’ (also known as ‘baby Yoda’), made by Hasbro, from 2020]
[Sylvanian Families playset from 2019]
[‘I Like Sleep’ fabric boots and bag, a collaboration between shoe brand Irregular Choice and toy brand Care Bears, 2020]
[Visitors in ‘cute’ style costumes]
Cliff Lauson (interview): “This is a whole show really asking ‘what is cute?’ What are the many faces of cute which we all know and love? But it’s a huge cultural phenomenon and it permeates every aspect of life and has everything to do with our relationships and our communities and our pets and our children. But it’s got so many different faces to it. And this exhibition aims to unpack all of those different aspects, and allow people different ways of thinking about something that seems so familiar to them.”
[‘Hello Kitty’ crockery]
[‘Hello Kitty’ karaoke machine]
[‘Hello Kitty’ television]
Cliff Lauson (interview): “One of the amazing things about cute is it has this ability to provoke an emotional response, and it can generate an effect in all of us. And it isn’t necessarily something that we can control. So it proves slippery in that nature, but it’s quite powerful. And so cute can be quite an endearing phenomenon. So something like Hello Kitty, which is celebrating her 50th anniversary this year, has, over time, become a cultural phenomenon.”
[Postcards of cherubs]
[‘Kewpie Doll,’ Rose O’Neill, 1913]
[‘Go on and hit a lick of benevolence,’ 2024, Sean-Kierre Lyons, a model of a fantastical creature]
[Sian Fan playing her interactive art installation ‘Glimmer’]
Sian Fan (interview): “So I’m really interested in the cute aesthetic because I think it has this deceptive power to it. It’s something that feels kind of very innocent and very light on the surface, but actually you get kind of the soft power and you get the kind of way it immerses itself into people’s consciousnesses, which I think is a really interesting, unique ability of the cute.”
[Pink dinosaur toy]
[‘HACIPUPU In My Dream’ series vinyl figures, made by Pop Mart, 2022]
[XXL Rainbow Eemo Cloud and Self-Supporting figure, by Jessica Emmett, 2023]
[Manga books, installation of clothes in background]
[‘Sailor Moon’ manga books, Naoko Takeuchi, 1992-1997]
[Kitten artworks]
Tabish Khan (interview): “I think cute actually divides people. When you see something really cutesy, like kittens with rainbows, some people love it and some people find it almost vomit-inducing. They find it a bit too much. And I think this is what this exhibition is getting at, that thin line between when does cute become too cute and what is too cute? And how much cuteness is enough.”
[‘Oom’ model of sleeping figure and illuminated figure]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.