Toki the alien bunny grows into a woman

Hye Rim Lee's work Powder Room comments on consumer culture and cosmetic surgery for women. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Until recently, Korea was an insular nation, mostly closed to the outside world. That changed when South Korea hosted the Olympics in 1988. Travel restrictions were lifted the following year and by 2002, a new generation of Korean migrants were venturing around the world.

New Zealand is quickly becoming a popular choice, with Korean residents growing from less than 1000 in 1989 to 30,000 by the end of 2002.

Hye Rim Lee moved to New Zealand in 1993 and is one of a growing number of Korean artists establishing a career here. Since completing a Fine Arts degree in 2002, she is already making a name for herself in the international arena with exhibitions in Thailand, the US and throughout New Zealand.

She has a solo show at the Gus Fisher Gallery and work screening at the New Zealand Film Archives' window display outside Auckland Central Library. Meanwhile, the Paradiso D'amore group exhibition has just started its four-city tour of China with Lee's work showing alongside such artists as Jeff Koons and Keith Haring.

Since her first solo show at the Moving Image Centre in 2002, Lee's work has explored aspects of her identity through the character Toki (Korean for bunny). Lee was born in the Chinese year of the rabbit: "The bunny is a special animal for the whole Chinese zodiac. It represents the moon, women and sexuality.

"My idea started with me being an immigrant and living in Auckland as a migrant. So I used a bunny as an alien Asian searching for identity. I used adolescence - the bunny looks young because adolescents always search for their identities and their lives are quite blurry. The migrant experience is so blurry and always scared and there are lots of blurry boundaries you're facing. But now I'm quite comfortable in my surroundings and I can talk about more detailed issues I have got."

Originally played by an actor in a bunny suit, Toki was merchandised in the form of inflatable dolls before moving into the virtual realm of digital animation, taking on the characteristics of Japanese manga or anime cartoons.

"I was brought up with that culture. When I was really young, animation was Disney or manga, so it was a big influence on youth culture.

"Another idea was talking about pop culture related to Japanese pop, Korean pop, Korean culture and femininity. I liked the idea of mass-produced objects talking about Western commercialism as well."

With Lee becoming comfortable in the cultural grey-area of being a Korean-born New Zealander, Toki has matured into a sexually confident character, exploring aspects of gender portrayal. It is interesting, then, that Lee now constructs these images of idealised beauty with the assistance of a female animator.

"My idea developed and I wanted to challenge this boy-game culture and talk about cosmetic surgery, because it is a male-dominated field. I found a skilled animator and then we were completely doing it with girls' ideas."

The increasing pervasiveness of cosmetic surgery has a particular twist in Asian countries where young girls will have their eyelids and nose changed to westernise their looks in accordance with the media images they receive.

"Magazines and television show the objectification of femininity and manipulation of insecurity about self and status of women, in Korea especially. So it questions the changing perception of construction of Korean beauty in popular media. It's quite a serious phenomenon - a very big portion of the population get into surgery."

Next year Lee will undertake an artist residency in Seoul. It will be her first exhibition in her homeland, where she no longer has any family, and will put a new perspective on her work, which has always discussed Korea from afar.

"I will kind of observe this culture rather than actually being there and experiencing it," she says. "So it will be interesting because I am an outsider for that. I can't be Kiwi and I can't be Korean either. But the experience I have from there, it is always in my heart. It always just formed with that imagery.

"Even here I've got a kind of changing identity, just like Toki has.

"She is kind of identifying information, so I'm in the same stage, to keep changing and evolving into different forms."

* Powder Room by Hye Rim Lee at the Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to July 8