Paul McCarthy’s ‘Mimi’ (2006 – 2008), so-named after his sister, stems from the artist’s ‘Hummel’ series, which are inspired by mass-produced mid-century Germanic kitsch figurines of cherubic children. In McCarthy’s world, however, the folkloric appearance of frolicking innocence portrayed in Hummel figurines becomes the subject of deconstruction and subversion. Here, ‘Mimi’ features a young girl and a fawn, presented together as a puritanical monolith in bubblegum pink, inviting in its implicit naïveté and reveling in saccharine sentimentality. And yet, belying the sculpture’s sleek façade, the garish deformation of these figures suggests the exploitation of youth, manufactured into an impossible ideal tailored for mass consumption. Irreverently pointing to the ideation of nostalgia and the use of children as objects of desire, McCarthy connects these themes to the insidious banality of fascism and patriarchal propaganda.