Hye Rim Lee: Crystal City

Diving into new reality then floating in virtual space, cyborg superhero TOKI – the creation of Auckland-based Korean inter-media artist Hye Rim Lee – provokes, teases, manipulates and performs. Ever evolving, ever confounding, TOKI moves through an ever expanding digital universe. In a radical critique of proliferating boy game computer culture, TOKI refuses to conform to any fantasy other than her own. Lee’s cyber world is one full of possibilities but fraught with the dangers of a technological society intent on the idea of instant purchasable transformation - the promise of beauty,
perfection, economy and fulfillment.

In an E-Mail-Interview with Rudolph Hudsucker the artist writes: "Beauty is now is a mass-produced commodity that can be purchased. This project explores the motivation, driven by mass media and advertising, that propels such a huge number of women to undertake invasive surgical procedures. Magazines and television show the objectification of femininity, co-modification of beauty, and the manipulation of insecurity about self and status. I investigate the issue of changing perception of Korean women’s constructed beauty, plastic surgery and the suggestion that this is an acceptable practice in order to construct ideal beauty and desirability."

“Crystal City” is a fantasyland where dream and reality mix. While Lee is humorous and nostalgic, she does not shy away from the darker side of fantasy, namely the worlds of obsession and addiction. She challenges the conventions of the traditionally male-dominated worlds of game structure and 3D animation, specifically, when it comes to virtualized images of women. “Crystal City” is a project in which cyberculture and contemporary myth-making intersect.