Chiho Aoshima

Born in 1974 in Tokyo, Chiho Aoshima is a contemporary Japanese pop artist who creates surreal digital art which combines feminine city landscapes with pop culture references. Designing dreamlike worlds, her digital artworks are packed with young women, cherry blossom, cityscapes and skulls. Describing her artwork, Aoshima states: “I sometimes feel I have to make lighter, happier images. But I really enjoy drawing the dark, disturbing worlds. Of course, in the end, even those should be cute.”

Chiho Aoshima’s Art Style and Influence

Chiho Aoshima’s surreal prints combine colourful palettes and anime influences with art historical matter, such as the Japanese Ukiyo-e genre. Working in a variety of art mediums – drawing, watercolour and, more recently, ceramics – Aoshima originally began creating her digital art working with Adobe Illustrator before printing images onto paper and other materials.

Distinctly feminine and spiritual, the art worlds Aoshima creates and the inhabitants that populate them are references to both the natural world and city landscapes. The resulting artwork becomes like a poster, with pop references and whimsical characters, undercut with a dark contemporary twist. This duality can be found in the other characteristic themes of her landscapes, for example, utopia and dystopia or nature and technology.

Chiho Aoshima is a part of the Japanese Superflat movement, as well as a key member of the contemporary Kaikai Kiki collective in Japan, both founded and headed-up by the world-famous artist Takashi Murakami. Aoshima draws inspiration from the flattened forms of Japanese graphic art such as manga and anime. This lack of planar depth explores cultural superficiality in postwar Japanese society, consumerism, and fetishism.

Aoshima’s Career and Key Exhibitions

With no formal art training, the economics graduate rose to prominence in the 1990s after teaching herself Adobe Illustrator. Aoshima presented her first show, Tokyo Girls Bravo, in 2004, organised by Takashi Murakami, before working at his ‘factory’ (an homage to Andy Warhol’s workshop of the same name). Her international printwork debut featured in the celebrated Superflat exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2001. In 2006, she held an artist residency at Art Pace, San Antonio, United States.

Since 2006, the artist has exhibited all over the world, enjoying solo shows in contemporary galleries across the US, Spain, France, and the UK. Prints and animation work from her City Glow series have also appeared on the walls of the New York City subway and in Gloucester Road tube station in London. You can see Chiho Aoshima art for sale here on the Rise Art website.