Critical Cuteness

Gaming as a route to self-care and activism.

by

PAWS: Protest, Activism, Whimsy and Self-Care in Animal Crossing, on view online through the School of the Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba until May 7, establishes its remarkable potential in its pluralistic and tone-setting title. 

The acronym, PAWS, articulates the themes and intentions of this Winnipeg show, while alluding to the cuteness of the Nintendo game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The title’s homophonic partner, “pause,” dictates the kind of space this exhibition intends to create: A platform for its audience to question the correlation between activism and self-care.

The pandemic has imposed unprecedented isolation as people around the world simultaneously confront systemic racism, oppressive governments and the climate crisis. As the show’s curator Ciel Noel says, activism requires self-care. Global crisis has also spurred a need for escapism. 

For many, escape comes in the form of gaming, including Animal Crossing. This strange and sweet game centres slowness and cultivation as each player customizes a character and an island that must be nurtured. 

The game allows artistic expression in many forms. Although confined to the unbearably cute visual language of the game, players can create clothing to display on their bodies or on mannequins and images that can be displayed as on posters or on the ground. A third form of expression is the grouping of ready-made objects provided by the game in virtual assemblages. Together, these modes of expression can best be described as installation. 

Noel, who was tasked with investigating modes of communicating art during the pandemic as part of a work-research position at the gallery, was facing Zoom fatigue, and sought exhibition possibilities in gaming. She came across a radical form of virtual protest by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong who were confined by the pandemic but continued their protest online through Animal Crossing. 

Acknowledging this inspiration, Noel collaborated with Battleax Bunny, the Trinidadian-born, Winnipeg-based designer of PAWS, to create a virtual installation of umbrellas. Umbrellas function as both an ongoing symbol of protest in Hong Kong, alluding to the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and 2019, and also as a tool to protect against pepper spray in real-life protests.

Works by three artists are included in PAWS. The most affective piece is American-based designer Adelle Lin’s memorial to two movements – Black Lives Matter and Say Their Names. This ground-based installation makes use of the perspective possibilities in Animal Crossing, requiring the player’s engagement from a range of angles. 

The cute avatar used to navigate the game, a character that races joyfully across open spaces, is halted by customized pixel tiles depicting the faces of Black victims of police brutality. While players are in no way blocked from entering and walking on Lin’s memorial, doing so would feel disrespectful and inappropriate. This display is arresting and beautiful. Originally designed for a protest Lin held on her own island, the memorial is encompassed by a valley and a waterfall with a giant luminescent moon at its head. Lin seeks to assert a space where protesters can safely access and mirror protests happening in real space.

Artists Kayelynn Kennedy and Hōkū Kanoe Schurz employ an empowering mediation between the realities of their own lives and the Animal Crossing realm.

For Kennedy, an illustrator based in California, Animal Crossing allows the maintenance of joyful self-expression using clothing as a form of self-care at a time when there is no reason to get dressed up.

The installation by Schurz, who was raised on the Akimel O’odham land known as Phoenix, Arizona, expresses visions of Indigenous sovereignty. Included are a Land Back flag designed by the artist, along with sand that emulates the artist’s ancestral territory, as well as customized outfits and face-paint posters that refer to traditional Indigenous styles. 

Creative expression in this virtual context has empowered Schurz to wear traditional clothes elsewhere and to engage in real-life conversations about the Land Back movement, which aims to place unceded lands back under Indigenous control.

Ultimately, the show serves Noel’s curatorial hope that Animal Crossing, a “cute and fun” exhibition platform, works “as a vehicle to express more serious matters that affect some of us outside of the game.” Its cuteness is critical. PAWS models many powerful modes of expression, protest and self-care that can inspire real-world reflection and empowerment. ■ 

PAWS: Protest, Activism, Whimsy and Self-Care in Animal Crossing, on view online through the School of the Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba from March 5 to May 7, 2021. To take a virtual tour, go here. 

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