Crystal City Spun

Crystal City is a 3D animation series involving a character named TOKI and her mythical creature Dragon YONG. The pair journeys through different imaginative cities, beginning inside TOKI’s fantasy and dream where Dragon YONG makes his debut. This sensational atmosphere is depicted as a cityscape of giant, spinning fantasy toys created in my first series, Crystal City, Spun.

The dream journey of TOKI and Dragon YONG will continue to evolve through research into contemporary popular culture, comics and animation, computer games and cyber culture. My project deals with the issues of creating a new mythology related to contemporary popular culture, especially cyber culture and video gaming.

TOKI is a highly stylised and curvaceous warrior-vixen who draws upon the Japanese tradition of Manga, Korean animamix and Western ideals of sexuality and beauty. She exists in a fantasyland ripe with testosterone-driven energy. Dragon YONG will wander with TOKI, the cyber girl, in a never-ending, ever-moving wonderland—a cityscape made of adult fantasy toys that is both futuristic and fantastic. 

Dragon YONG is a kind of beast that inhabits Korean mythology and is a symbol of Asian identity and culture. Dragon YONG “inherits” TOKI’s eyes, referencing a traditional feature of the Korean Dragon as it becomes a vehicle for TOKI’s fantasy exploration and a recipient of her desires and dreams. In this manner, the artist is transferring TOKI’s role to Dragon YONG for the purpose of engendering a new era of mythmaking.

Crystal City is a fantasyland where dream and reality mix. It is humorous, fun and playful. Crystal City evokes nostalgia for childhood, but its mix of reality and toy-world-like fantasy also suggests, or reveals, the darker side of fantasy, the worlds of obsession and addiction. 

Although my work is rooted in the challenges facing the Asian diaspora community that has settled in New Zealand, the work speaks to the manipulation and perception of female identity.