BEUTE. A typo that stuck. A folder named in haste, in which Baby Reni collects beauty campaign images. Missing the ‘A’, the ‘Y’ replaced for an‘E’, landing somewhere more honest. In German, ‘Beute’ means loot, prey, a haul. Something taken. Something won.
Operating as a fictional agency, Baby Reni doesn’t quite know what it sells, but does know very well how to sell it. By looting the languages of fashion, advertisement and campaigning, the work mimics everything the industry produces, the gaze, the gloss, the desire, except for the product itself. Only the mechanism surrounding it is uncovered.
The exhibition BEUTE displays this system and reclaims the aesthetic categories it makes use of. Similarly to how Baby Reni reclaims cuteness she turns the mechanics of (Western) beauty standards into something to be examined, handled and played with. Underneath the gloss, the cute and the quirky sits something else: a humour that doesn’t announce itself and a lightness that carries weight.
Baby Reni is the moniker of artist and designer Irene Ha. By deconstructing fashion conventions from an artistic standpoint, she draws connections between the contemporary culture she grew up in and the traditional customs of her Vietnamese heritage.
Exhibition BEUTE
Das Leben am Haverkamp, The Hague
29 May – 21 June, 2026
daslebenamhaverkamp.com
Photography: Nikola Lamburov
MUA: Kathinka Gernant
Models: Yade Noe, Ren Takagi, Thu-Anh Nguyen, Milou Xiao Wan Smits
