That’s Cute

That’s Cute begins with the demonstrative. There is something indubitable about our sense of cuteness. Apparently, it’s biological: something to do with an evolutionary desire to care for adorable children and animals. But it also has much to do with the present historical moment: no longer the preserve of subcultures, the cute has become popular and pervasive, with a well-developed database of cat videos, uWu, cottage-core and the coquette. Today, the issue of subjective judgement concerns not the cute thing itself, but our reactions, which can range from being utterly charmed to acute repulsion.

This exhibition deals with the moment of encounter between the viewer and the cute. It features works by eight contemporary artists where the cute appears but then unfurls wildly. Some of these artists are studied veterans of the cute; they deliberately harness its neotenous forms and its comforting familiarity to complicate its repertoire, and our relationships with technology, religion, and society. For others, cuteness is part of a practice of playfulness as well as a means of sensitising our gaze into the world.

That’s Cute is an open invitation to reconsider how obvious visual and symbolic qualities can translate into uncertain feelings, and to encounter the cute’s powerful provocation to embrace the furry and the fuzzy.