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.
"[3] Born in Tokyo in 1983, Inomata grew up in a "forest of concrete buildings",[4] and attributes her artistic influences to early experiences in greenspaces at schools and parks as respite in her childhood urban environment.
[5] 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".
(2009), Inomata utilized rapid prototyping and CT scanning to produce habitable 3D-printed plastic shells for hermit crabs decorated with cityscapes.
"[10] For her participation in No Man's Land, Inomata exhibited photographs of hermit crabs in her the clear resin sculptures of Tokyo housing complexes and Paris' Haussmann apartment buildings.
[11] The hermit crabs' acceptance, inhabitation, and exchanges of the printed shells represents the swapping and crossing of cities and nationalities, especially for global migrants and refugees.
[14] In an act of "exchanging coats", Inomata highlights the co-development of human beings and their domesticated pets, having evolved alongside each other for centuries.
In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Inomata collaborated with Toho University marine scientists Kenji Okoshi and Masahiro Suzuki for the work Lines—Listening to the Growth Lines of Molluscan Shell (2015—).
Inomata then introduced a live octopus to the fabricated shell, which it promptly inhabited, allowing for the impossible meeting of both animal relatives across time.
In late 2019, she presented her first solo exhibition, AKI INOMATA: Significant Otherness, in Japan at the Towada Art Center in Aomori Prefecture.
[10] In the series' latest iteration, Inomata employed automated CNC-machines, which produce rotary-blade nicks similar to the bite marks of the beavers, to carve the logs.