What makes something ‘cute’? Inside the exhibition defining the phenomenon

• Glittering and adorned with stickers, cute plasters and whimsical jewellery, they, like this exhibition, stand out in the late-January weather.
• It can only be the gallery’s new exhibition on Cute – the first large-scale exhibition to examine the phenomenon.
• This encapsulates the most obvious secondary function of cute – intense consumerism, and its ability to sell objects of all kinds.

Cute is a slippery word

• Playing on the word “slipperiness”, which is invoked several times in the catalogue, the exhibition’s efforts to put cute into distinct categories wrestles with its fluid qualities, which clamour for attention among the many objects on display.
• Objects of all kinds harness the differing qualities of cute to incite emotions – of sympathy, tenderness, love and desire.
• The “cute universe” offers a deeper look at the concept through displays on community, how cute can disguise agendas, the juxtaposition of cute and horror and the glistening promise of cute as a future lifestyle aesthetic.

Playing with scale

• The exhibition also plays with scale, with both oversized and undersized installations.
• This makes visitors feel they’ve become children once again, playing with tiny toys or experiencing an oversized world.
• Within cute is a performance of desire, filling in the gap between what we have and what we have lost.
• And yet, as I thought about the exhibition on my journey home, I craved a second helping.

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Hui-Ying Kerr received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for her Doctorate in History of Design on Japanese
culture in the 1980s economic bubble.