A ground-breaking exhibition featuring toys, emojis, video games and more to explore how cuteness impacts culture and society opens tomorrow in London. Yes, cats are the main theme.
advertisement“I'm not going to be pretty, I'm going to be deathly gorgeous.”
American drag performer and choreographer Alyssa Edwards has food for thought. She might not be as excited as we are about an exhibition in London that focuses more on cuteness than gorgeousness. In fact, exclusively.
Indeed, if there's one exhibition that we at Euronews Culture have been looking forward to since it was announced late last year, it's the one at Somerset House that explores how cuteness affects culture and society. This is a new exhibit.
Simply and aptly titled CUTE, it will be released tomorrow (Thursday, January 25th).
Curated by Claire Catterall, senior curator at Somerset House, the exhibition features everything from emojis to internet memes, video games to stuffed animals and food, and brings together contemporary artists from a variety of disciplines to create adorable aesthetics and Navigating our relationships.
CUTE promises to be a “ground-breaking exhibition that explores the irresistible power of cuteness in contemporary culture,” and describes the “acceptance of kawaii culture around the world and how it In this way, we will examine how the scale has become so influential in our time.
Contributing artists include Mike Kelley, Yumeji Takehisa, Fumi Takano, Ado Mizumori, Juliana Huxtable, Wong Ping, Rachel MacLean, Lam Ham, and more.
We are particularly looking forward to an immersive visual and audio music installation by multidisciplinary artist Hannah Diamond.
Inspired by girls' sleepovers and featuring a curated collection of videos from artists like Sophie, Charli brings a positive vision. She will be showing off her music, which is the best super cute electronic dance of Girls' Generation.
As you've probably guessed, cats play an important role in CUTE, and Somerset is also partnering with Sanrio to celebrate Hello Kitty's 50th anniversary.
The ultimate cute icon for some people. A cute wave agent with the cold, dead eyes of someone who kills others.
There is a section dedicated to Hello Kitty, with exhibits of past Kitties, a space dedicated to stuffed animals, and a disco.
Yes, you read that correctly. Disco. It's a bit of a mistake, but it's a minor incident, because we all know that cats like meow tars. We are still very excited.
“CUTE'' will be on display at Somerset House from January 25th to April 14th.
(Note: This article has been updated and was first published on December 18, 2023.)