Baby Reni's show 'BEUTE' launches her fictional agency

Cuteness hides its edge pretty well. That’s where the power lies, and Baby Reni — the moniker of Dutch artist and designer Irene Ha — has been flirting with the strength behind the glitz for some time now. Dissecting conventional (Western) beauty standards through her playful, tasteful iterations, Baby Reni’s new solo show, ‘BEUTE’ at The Hague’s Das Leben am Haverkamp, sees her operating as a fictional agency where the product doesn’t quite know what it is, but confidently sells itself anyway.

A typo that remains just as evocative — dismissing the ‘A’ and plainly replacing the ‘Y’ with an ‘E’ — ‘BEUTE’ is exactly this: a witty approach to the mechanics of fashion advertising. Conveniently enough, the German word Beute also means prey or haul — making ‘looting’ the delicious activity of choice for the exhibition. Here, the language of desire is translated into glossy editorial-like images hanging on aquamarine walls, stacked turquoise shoe boxes (with no shoes in sight) sitting on a purple-carpeted floor, and transparent cubes safely storing bouquets. Shot in collaboration with photographer Nikola Lamburov, the pictured duo-coloured shiny lips are simply holding a tube. We don’t know what it is, and that’s the point.

Co-hosted by her stylish, vintage-Belgian-designer-wearing muzes (with a ‘z’, as Baby Reni writes), the opening drew an equally fashionable crowd. It’s a space where fashion-adjacent objects and images can be enjoyed without the constant pressure of being sold something — for once. And sometimes, mimicry really is the best way to dismantle the master’s tools.