Born 1958 in Tokyo, based in Tokyo

Completed the master's degree program in sculpture at Musashino Art University in 1983. She was awarded the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Artists in 2000 - her work featured the same year in a solo exhibition at the Meguro Museum of Art - and the Teijiro Nakahara Prize in 2003. Aoki has been working with steel as a material since the early 1980s. Torch-cutting sheet metal and then welding together the pieces, she creates simple, large-scale works, characterized by their sense of openness, that stunningly dispel the image of steel as a heavy material and of sculpture as a solid object. Not only in gallery spaces, but outdoors as well, by embracing time and the air around them, her works transform the places where they are installed.