Overview
Tatsumi Orimoto is a Mummy’s boy. His mum is his ultimate muse, model and masterpiece. His exhibition depicts themes of old age, illness and the bodily and mental decline of his 86 year old mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. You might think that this would result is an extremely morbid and depressing exhibition, but you're wrong. by now aged 86 central subjects are communication and interaction. Orimoto is, in fact, quite the artistic comedian. His alter-ego, "Bread Man", see him wearing French baguettes twined to his face. The point of the bizarre disguise being identity creation, consumption, and acceptance.
Besides the “Bread Men-Performances”, Tatsumi Orimoto's main project is “Art Mama” which is essentially a family photo album featuring mainly small, black and white images as well as some larger colour prints, deliberately composed with the camera. The star of the photographs is his very own mother. In the series Orimoto poses alongside his mother in order to communicate a message of family and emotional closeness with his mother, despite the fact that oral communication with her is no longer possible. The series of images is amazing. Due to the extensive length of time Orimoto has been working on the exhibit, the most interesting part of the seried is the way he as a model has aged between images. The growing likeness of mother and son becomes more evident in the later photos, and the emotional connection between the two appears only to intensify.