Hanako Hayakawa: 遊戯 (Yugi) no.3

In 遊戯 (Yugi) no. 3, Hanako Hayakawa explores the political aesthetics of cuteness in a society driven by the struggle for attention. Here, cuteness is both a necessary performance and a survival strategy.

Hayakawa’s body becomes a space in which the traditions of girlhood – ranging from contemporary manga and anime, through Madame Hanako, a figure of Japonism, to the 20th-century educational dance magazine 遊戯と唱歌 – are reimagined as tactical forms of subjectivity. Through the intensification of desire, softness, ambiguity and rupture, ‘girlhood’ is revealed not as a fixed identity, but as a form of performance that can be inhabited, disrupted and transformed.

Here, ‘cuteness’ becomes a powerful, subversive and playful tactic of identity: the very conditions that render it necessary in the first place now serve as the starting point for its potential dissolution.

IN ENGLISH