Aki Inomata (あき いのまた Inomata Aki, born 1983) is a Japanese multidisciplinary contemporary artist and designer based in Tokyo. Her work addresses identity and displacement, and questions societal boundaries between humans versus animals and the natural versus man-made worlds. Much of her artistic practice aims at creating collaborative interspecies relationships through such contemporary modeling technologies as 3-D scanning and printing techniques. Inomata's cross-disciplinary Bio Art projects complicate the notion of production while proposing a new awareness of human and nonhuman ecologies, as she states: "The concept of my works is to get people to perceive the modes of life of various living creatures by experience a kind of empathy toward them."
Education and professional activity
Born in Tokyo in 1983, Inomata grew up in a "forest of concrete buildings," and attributes her artistic influences to early experiences in greenspaces at schools and parks as respite in her childhood urban environment. Contact with animal and insect life in these spaces sparked Inomata's early interest in interspecies kinships. Inomata graduated with an MFA in Intermedia Art from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2008, studying under artist Yoshiaki Watanabe. As a student, Inomata experimented with sound installations and digital projections in order to engage natural environments in urban space, inspired by avant-garde Japanese playwright Jūrō Kara's theatrical technique of shakkei, or "borrowed scenery." In 2013, she began working as a visiting researcher at Waseda University and in 2014 became a part-time Faculty of Art and Design lecturer at the Department of Informational Design at Tama Art University. She was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2014 YouFab Global Creative Awards from Loftwork Inc. In 2017, she lived in New York for three months as a recipient of an Individual Fellowship Grant with International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) from the Asian Cultural Council. Most recently, she has worked as a part-time lecturer at the Department of Art and Design, Joshibi University of Art and Design since 2019, and the Department of Sculpture at Musashino Art University since 2020.
Artwork
Inomata is best known for projects highlighting interspecies relationships and collaborations, often facilitated through complimenting natural animal processes with technological interventions. Departing from her early student work with technological simulations of natural environments, Inomata's breakthrough came through collaborations with nonhuman species as "co-creators."