Carrying a baby pig on my back : Tatsumi Orimoto

Tatsumi Orimoto15 Nov – 6 Dec 2014

About the Exhibition

For quite some time, I have done various performances together with animals, such as the cow, pig, chicken, donkey, alpaca, and owl. I like to have freer ideas to make art - there is no reason that animals cannot have art if humans can. In 2012, I visited a baby pig farm in Ibaraki, Japan, because I had a desperate urge to carry a lovely baby pig on my back.

What the current exhibition presents is a record of my performance there: how I struggled with a raging baby pig - peeing and pooping all over my body - until I finally succeeded in literally piggybacking it.

In April this year (2014), I invited 500 elderly women to a monastery in Evora, a UNESCO World Heritage city in Portugal. We had an extremely fun time, dancing and singing folk songs together, while enjoying pumpkin soup, fried rice with duck, local special cakes and red wines. It was such a "communication art" in the form of eating together, which I believe is the most important way of sharing time for human beings. The current exhibition features my latest work that revolves around this event, composed of an approximately 20-minute video that documents the gathering, related drawings, picture postcards and reference materials.

Installation Views

About the Artist

Tatsumi Orimoto

Born in Kawasaki in 1946, Orimoto moved to the United States in the 1970s, producing work in Los Angeles and New York. From the 1980s onward, he worked internationally, primarily creating and presenting performance-based works. Solo exhibitions include the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo, 2000), Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale (USA), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, 1990s), and Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP, 1990s). He participated in international exhibitions such as the 16th São Paulo Biennale (1981), the 18th São Paulo Biennale (1985), the 1st Havana Biennale (1984), the 8th Sydney Biennale (1986), and the Yokohama Triennale (2001). His work was widely recognized across countries and cultures. Orimoto passed away in 2025.