Cute Exhibition at Somerset House

The viral exhibition Cute was in its last week a few days ago at Somerset House. wonder | wander | women have always been fascinated by kawaii culture since Hello Kitty and FRUITS Magazine, so we joined our friends and their excited kids for a wander through Cute land.

Cute exhibition header from Somerset House, created via AI

The exhibition 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!

Hello Kitty 50th anniversary celebration room

We took pictures of the kids going nuts at the wall of plushies and our friend's Sanrio-obsessed daughter just had to tell us every relationship between every character. We also looked at the timeline of Hello Kitty and picked out what she looked like the year that each of us were born. 

Selfie wall of Hello Kitty plushies

My friend and I recognised toys, bags and goodies from our childhood and young adulthood, like Hello Kitty toasters, boomboxes and a whole gang of Kitty and her friends. 

Hello Kitty retro and vintage merchandise

It was a whole world of familiar characters, and adults and kids alike were drawn into the magical environments. Sanrio and the curators had created a Disneyland-like atmosphere of mascots, bright colours and yes, cuteness. There was even a Hello Kitty disco!

But before Hello Kitty was born, and during every year of her adorable reign, fans were reading, creating and disseminating 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 feelings exposed to the world. 

Illustrations by Junichi Nakahara and Macoto Takahashi

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, and their works are about seeking comfort in a world of harsh or overwhelming realities.

Hannah Diamond's immersive music room

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, but instead of first-person shooters and fantasy battles, there was dressing up, monster romance, and quiet rainy days.

The Play Together section featured different toys and games.

Cute culture is bold but self-conscious, stepping out with one eye on the mirror (or on the selfie cam). It is self-referential, drawing from many cultures and eras: punk, gothic lolita, Victorian, the nostalgia of childhood and uncertainty of early adulthood.

The visitors to Cute were as varied and eye-catching as the exhibits themselves.

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 to them, creating photo montages, videos and animations, and sculptures of fantastical and strange creatures in candy colours.

When everything is new, the pleasures are skin deep,
Isaac Lythgoe, 1989.

There is a darkness to Cute that comes with every escapist culture. The cuteness was sometimes uncanny or sexualised, and sometimes it was a thin veneer over ugly realities like fascism, drug use or childhood trauma. Cute culture is comforting, but it can also be narcotic. Even so, some artists use cuteness itself to tell darker stories with a softer edge, touching on topics like isolation or upsetting memories without repulsing audiences, creating modern fables for new audiences.

Dazzleddark, video by Mark Leckey, 2023

It was a thought-provoking exhibition under all the hype and shiny visuals, but seeing it with children gave us a perspective we maybe wouldn't have found on our own. My friends' kids and their exclamations, requests and questions, not to mention the detailed descriptions of Sanrio's characters and stories, gave the show another layer of meaning. After all the analysis and critique, we dialled it back down to the fresh eyes of a new generation. 

Little Blackpink fan and her personal rainbow!