Hiu Tung Yip, Wings

Through analysing visual and tactile qualities, artworks and cultural symbols we associate with Cute and Uncanny, and finding them in unusual objects and applying them in different contexts, this research looks into the (production of) contemporary manmade Cute, i.e. how do we provoke the feelings of Cute in a completely manufactured circumstance? What do we have to borrow from nature? From the pass? From our shared cultural awareness? And what does that speak of us as an ever-changing culture and society?

Cute is domestic, in the sense that it is able to create a safe and warm space. To illustrate this, you only have to look at how there is a ‘cute version’ of every homey object, especially in Asia. It is closely linked with our childhood and nostalgia. Cute’s domesticity also comes from that it carries a sense of ‘supposed private-ness’, in how you create a personal bond with a cute object when you regard them as cute, and in how as an adult, enjoying cute things are sometimes frowned upon and in some cases shamed into private-ness.

Yet Cute is also anti-domestic – it has the power to make anything surreal and thus out of the ordinary. If we apply the formula of Cute to any daily object, we are essentially creating an exaggerated version of that in reality. In this sense, Cute almost always semi-detach itself from our world.

Coming from a jewellery making background gives Hiu a specific edge in understanding Cute as a body-related sensibility that shares the internal tension and struggles between jewellery, domesticity and traditional feminine crafts within the context of art.

Limited edition prints available, please contact artist for details.

As one of the methodologies used in this body of work, this animation draft aims to provide a visual analysis as to extract conventionally cute qualities such as roundness, softness and fluffiness, and apply them onto a geometric cube through a series of metamorphosis – shouldn’t it be cute if those qualities are the essence of what Cute is?