Cute review: an 'unsettling' yet 'highly seductive' exhibition

The concept of cuteness is explored in full force at this Somerset House show

Graphic Thought Facility’s Playing dress-up with AI (2023)
Graphic Thought Facility’s Playing dress-up with AI (2023)
(Image credit: Graphic Thought Facility/Somerset House)

Cuteness is everywhere, these days, said Rhik Samadder in The Observer. Emojis, kittens, bunnies and fluffy soft toys have taken over. In its broadest sense, biologists believe, cuteness is "an evolutionary adaptation, developed by babies so we don't abandon them". But it is also a cultural phenomenon, and in the decades since the ascendancy of the internet, it has become a cult.

Cat pictures – cited by Tim Berners-Lee as the most surprising and unforeseen use of his creation – and other saccharine animal memes have become the lingua franca of the World Wide Web; this kind of infantilisation has profoundly influenced "the way we talk online", and increasingly in real life, too.

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