Tatsumi Orimoto (1946, Kawasaki, Japan) is one the most renowned Japanese photographers and art performers. He moved to California where he studied at California Institute of the Arts, relocating later to New York where he was an assistant to Fluxus artist Nam Jun Paik. He participated in the Fluxus exhibition in New York, and later developed a collaborative work with Viennese Actionist Herman Nitsch. Ever since he went back to Japan in 1977, he has been devoting himself to his art works and the care of his elderly mother. This resulted in the project Art Mama, which has played a central role in the development of his later work as he started documenting the aging process of his Alzheimer’s mother.

His performances are connected to the everyday experience of life. Through Bread-Man, he has created an alter ego that represents modern life and how we relate to the Other in contemporary society. His corpus of works represents a profound existentialist preoccupation. Tatsumi Orimoto is himself a larger-than-life character, Bread-Man is at the same time tender and distant as it plunges us into the unknown through an object that brings many memories and recollections to the audience.