Akiko's work deals with the realisation of existence: Things that are consumed, worn, worked, worried, carried, forgotten, collected, things that used as comforts and things used as crutches. Her artworks often relate to the body, she uses processes that deal with human behaviours, such as acts of collecting, recording, constructing, stitching, knitting , drawing (all acts involved in the primal protection and sheltering of the body) are utilised and examined in her practice, balancing the works between addressing the corporeal and the behavioural sides of being a person.

 

As portraits of human activity, the works often contain a little sigh of the anxiety, perhaps even dissatisfaction with, what she observes in the world around her.​ Awareness of the portrait taker always being implied in the portrait, Akiko often puts on display through her works, acts of repetition, records and reconstructions. Akiko's practice records human problems: of an ambivalence towards boundaries, of the line crossed between a comfort and a crutch, of mole-hills turned to mountains, of the vague anxieties and niggling problem associated with comprehending and surviving existence.