Chiho Aoshima (Japanese, b.1974) is a Pop graphic artist who lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. She is a member of the Kaikai Kiki artist collective. This collective is headed by Takashi Murakami (Japanese, b.1962), an Opus Underground artist. Aoshima graduated from Hosei University in Tokyo in 1995 with an economics degree, and completed a residency at Art Pace in San Antonio, TX, in 2006. She began her art career in Murakami's factory without any previous professional art training.
Aoshima's work mostly portrays young women in dreamscapes and surreal scenes. These works frequently include elements such as demons, ghosts, and nature. Her work is held in a variety of collections and has been exhibited all over the world. Aoshima primarily transfers large images onto paper by using industrial-sized printers. To give her artwork more depth, she has also used materials such as plastic and leather. Her largest work to date measures 4.8 meters in height and 32.5 meters in length. In addition to her large artworks, Aoshima has done work in animation and sculpture.
Some of her artwork can be seen on the walls of the New York City transit station and in subway stations in London. The images on the walls of the New York City transit station are a part of her City Glow series. The London Gloucester Road tube station and the 14th Street-Union Square station in New York both have Aoshima's artwork as well.
Her work can be seen in collections in the Ackland Art Museum in North Carolina and in the Seattle Art Museum in Washington. Aoshima's artwork is classified as Superflat, which is the term used to describe the postmodern art movement started by Takashi Murakami. Regarding her art, Aoshima says, "My work feels like strands of my thoughts that have flown around the universe before coming back to materialise." Aoshima's artwork also includes The Divine Gas, which was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 2007. In addition, she has had exhibitions at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, and Galerie Emmanuel Perratin in Paris, France, in 2006.
