Cat Got Your Tongue?

Hello Kitty Exhibit Not Just Cute

When one thinks of Hello Kitty, thoughts of the color pink might come to mind. One might picture a little Asian girl all decked out in Hello Kitty gear playing with her toys.

But local artist and University of Washington graduate Maki Tamura, has paired Hello Kitty with something that might not usually be associated with the cute character.

The Japanese company Sanrio introduced hello Kitty to the public in 1974. Now, almost 30 years later, the character continues to be a favorite for many world-wide, and the kitty can be found on everything from furniture, pencils, and even toasters and refrigerators.

Tamura's work, part of the "Rabbit, Cat and Horse: Endearing Creatures in Japanese Art" exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, is on display until March 16, and features a colorfully-decorated girl's room illuminated by Japanese pagoda-shaped lamps and surrounded by Hello Kitty memorabilia.

The room combines past and present Eastern and Western aesthetics representing a broad range of influences including Japanese woodblock and Ukiyo-e prints, Indonesian hand-woven textiles and batik, 19th and 20th century Japanese and Western children's books, European decorative arts, and Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa."

"My initial response to using Hello Kitty as a motif was a mixed feeling of joy and frustration," says the Japanese-born Tamura.

"Having grown up with Hello Kitty in the 70's and 80's, I have a lot of nostalgic and sentimental feelings [for the character]. On the other hand, Hello Kitty presented many problems on the intellectual level. It was a big challenge to figure out how I could put my own artwork and Hello Kitty products in the same space--how I could draw the connections between mass-produced fancy goods and my artwork."

This is why Tamura ventured to include images, which starkly contrast the kitty. The artist copied erotic scenes from Japanese woodcuts and included them on scroll paintings which stream down the room's walls. The contradictions between the overtly "cute" and overtly "sexual" are Tamura's just intent.

"The 'Cat, Rabbit and Horse' [exhibit] including my installation, proposes that the aesthetic of cuteness has been an integral and everyday part of Japanese art throughout history," explains Tamura.

"The last part of the exhibit shows Hello Kitty as the contemporary icon of cuteness, whose dynamic meaning is in question here. Using Hello Kitty as the starting point, the installation maps out the issues of sexuality, gender, race and class."

"The viewer may ask, 'is this elaborate pink room occupied by a little girl or a woman?' The depiction of couples as sexual partners serves as a metaphor for any form of domination--of human over animal, of man over woman, of one culture over another. The installation is designed to encourage [people] to consider how popular images subliminally reinforce a power hierarchy in our society, as we unwittingly consume and absorb them."

Tamura also incorporates an abundance of animal images scattered throughout the room. There are naturalistically painted rabbits and deer on scrolls, menagerie animals caged in prison-like surroundings, and sometimes humans are featured dressed as animals behaving in a like manner. Animals are also dressed like people to convey a circus-like theme.

These animal images are also balanced with an array of historical references to "Chinoiserie," the 18th and 19th century taste for "Oriental-inspired" decorative arts that illustrate the European tendency to exoticize Asian culture and represent it through images that are more fantasy than reality.

Tamura acknowledges that her main influence in her artwork draws from her junior year of undergraduate study at the UW, when she went to study in Rome, Italy for a studio art program.

"The richness of culture and the dense layers of history was seen everywhere," she says. "It took me years to digest the three month experiences and use the information I gained there in my own artwork."

Graduate school at Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania only furthered the artist's love for culture and its connection with art.

"I took art theory courses taught by Coco Fusco, one of the leading performance artists and writers in the world. Her classes gave me the most important foundation of how I incorporate the issue of gender and cultural identity into my artwork."

While Tamura's pairing of Hello Kitty along with these "erotic" scenes might not seem quite the purrfect combination, art lovers as well as fans of the family-friendly feline might just learn something new by visiting the installation.

"The artwork comes alive when the viewers are walking through the installation," says Tamura.

"I am very happy when I see the audience of such diverse age groups enjoy the work."