Sky Tower Moon Festival Projection
Monday, 06 October 2025
The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is one of the most important celebrations in Chinese culture. Traditionally, it is a time for family reunion, moon viewing and sharing mooncakes, symbolising harmony and togetherness. Inspired by ancient legends and cultural traditions, the festival continues to connect people across generations under the full moon.
Moon Festival at the Sky Tower
This year, the Sky Tower will come alive with a spectacular Moon Festival projection, showcasing the creativity of three artists who have reimagined the festival through contemporary art. Their works bring together tradition and innovation, lighting up Auckland’s skyline with stories of reunion, heritage, and culture.
Introducing our artists
Alan Yanke Wang
Alan Yanke Wang is a renowned New Zealand artist and educator, currently the President of the New Zealand International Art Exchange Association. With decades of artistic and teaching experience, he founded the New Zealand Painting Pen Art School, now a leading institution. His award-winning works have been widely exhibited, and he continues to promote cultural exchange through major artistic events in New Zealand and abroad.
When creating this work, Alan Yanke Wang recalled the solitude of spending holidays alone upon first arriving in New Zealand. Inspired by the Tang poet Li Bai’s image of “raising a cup to invite the moon” the piece evokes not only the figure of solitary drinking but also the shared emotion of admiring the moon wherever one may be. Using traditional ink painting, the work expresses this deep, subtle sentiment through interplay of emptiness and form, while digital technology gives the piece new life, rendering the ink’s negative space in a more tangible, contemporary way.
XI Li 李曦
Xi Li 李曦is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Harbin, China, now based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. Her practice spans moving images, installations, performances, VR, and digital-physical experiments. Exploring themes of self-mythology, diaspora, cyberspace, and cultural hybridity, her work bridges technology and the body, memory and perception, natural materials and digital systems.
“Sky Totem” transforms Auckland’s Sky Tower into a vertical cultural totem, celebrating the Moon Festival through a narrative that spans time and space. From ancient celestial phenomena, folklore, and myths to contemporary scenes of reunion, the work unfolds as a dynamic “living mural” in the night sky. Featuring a layered relief-like structure with metallic textures and breathing light effects, the piece is organized into five levels—Celestial, Folk, Myth, Contemporary, and Roots—connected by a motif of osmanthus branches, forming a cultural lifeline. Visitors gazing upward experience both visual impact and a deep sense of cultural resonance.
Rachel Lyu
Rachel is a young art school student with a deep passion for creativity. Since beginning her painting journey three years ago, she has been exploring themes inspired by Chinese culture, weaving traditional elements into her contemporary artistic practice. Through her work, Rachel hopes to share the beauty and symbolism of her cultural heritage with a wider audience, while continuing to grow as an emerging artist.
For Rachel, the Moon of the Mid-Autumn Festival is more than a symbol of reunion. Its round shape reminds her of a delicate blue-and-white porcelain plate, holding all her memories of home. She draws on the ancient craft of blue-and-white porcelain as the central element of her work, paying homage to tradition. Combining this motif with the landscape of A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, she paints verdant mountains in oil and a luminous, translucent moon in watercolor. The gentle moon becomes a small mark, connecting her in New Zealand to her homeland and family.
