Focusing on the act of “making” is not exclusive to human beings, Inomata creates art works with various species “collaboratively.” She investigates relationships between animals and human beings and the creation emerging from them.

Much of her body of work has been produced in collaboration with other creatures, such as Think Evolution, in which she transcends the enormous span of time during which evolution took place by bringing together an ammonite and an octopus, Why Not Hand Over a “Shelter” to Hermit Crabs?, in which hermit crabs move into transparent "shelters" modelled after cities of the world, Memory of Currency, in which Inomata creates pearls in the shape of portraits of people on national currencies by inserting a small, three-dimensional nucleus—a foreign body—into oyster shells, and I Wear the Dog's Hair, and the Dog Wears My Hair.

Major recent exhibitions include Roppongi Crossing 2022: Coming & Going (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2022-2023), APERTO16 AKI INOMATA Acting Shells (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, 2022), Aichi Triennale 2022 (Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, 2022), Broken Nature (MoMA, New York, U.S.A., 2020-2021), AKI INOMATA: Significant Otherness (Towada Art Center, Aomori Prefecture, 2019), The XXII Triennale di Milano (Triennale Design Museum, Milan, Italy, 2019), Toronto Biennial of Art (Toronto, Canada, 2019), Aki Inomata, Why Not Hand Over a “Shelter” to Hermit Crabs? (Musée d'arts de Nantes, France, 2018), and Thailand Biennale, Krabi 2018 (Krabi, Thailand, 2018).

Collections housing her work include those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art.