Lady Aiko

Aiko Nakagawa (born 1975), known as Lady Aiko or AIKO, is a Japanese street artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is known for her ability to combine western art movements and eastern technical, artistic skills, as well as for her large-scale works installed in cities including Rome, Italy, Shanghai, China and Brooklyn, New York.

Aiko's work is inspired by 18th-century Japanese woodblock printing and has been described as "joyfully, subversively feminine." Aiko is heavily inspired by her Japanese identity, and experiences as a Japanese woman. Through her graffiti and street art, she gives visibility and representation to women and girls, as well as addressing gender inequality and other issues they may face in the world. She attended an all-girl high school. In the mid-1990s, she moved to New York City where she apprenticed in artist Takashi Murakami's Brooklyn studio. Her and Muramaki's work are similar by their incorporation of Japanese culture, and have even worked with high-end fashion designer, Louis Vuitton. She studied media studies at the New School University Together the artists created "large format, monochromatic, screen-printed female nudes," among other work. They collective became very popular through this style which worked similarly across media from posters, to prints, to gallery works on canvas.

Aiko' s work was included in the Museum of Sex's erotic street art exhibition in 2012. Later that year she created the mural Here's Fun for Everyone

In 2013, she attended the international street art festival Nuart in Stavanger, Norway, alongside fellow female graffiti artists Martha Cooper and Faith 47.

Works

2008 Bunny - Kid Robot, Limited Edition Vinyl Figure 2012 After a Long Time, exhibition at Merry Karnowsky Gallery, LA 2013 Lady Butterfly, limited edition sculpture / pearl white 2014 Sweetheart, at The Outsiders Gallery, Newcastle, UK 2015 Lady Butterfly, limited edition sculpture / pink