Hye Rim Lee Swan Lake (still) 2025. 3D animation. 3D generalist: Steven Stringer. Courtesy of the artist
2 August – 23 November 2025
An immersive, dreamlike digital reinterpretation of the classic Tchaikovsky ballet.
Shimmering swans glide across a rippling, dreamlike lake, opening a luminous world of transformation and transcendence. Exploring themes of healing and eternity, Hye Rim Lee’s resplendent new large-scale animation offers a richly layered narrative of memory, identity and spiritual journey.
Hye Rim Lee is an acclaimed Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based digital artist with over two decades of international practice. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, into a family immersed in the performing arts. Her transformative reimagining of the ballet resonates with emotional complexity and visual splendour, bringing forth a world of mesmerising spectacle and performance.
-
Curator:
Ken Hall -
Exhibition number:
1177
Related
Artist Profile
Hye Rim Lee
The laptop fires up and a dreamlike virtual world materialises. Exquisite peacocks – glassy black, ethereal white – emerge on a moonlit stage, framed by icy blue branching patterns. A cast of swans glide through a luminous, rippling lake in measured arcs, their movements both urgent and graceful. In other scenes, two royal lovers – bound by fate, divided by unseen forces – circle one another, mirroring gestures of longing and hesitation.