Our body gives us a sense of ownership. It belongs to us. It’s private property. When printing the body permanently, one self-publishes.
Inked with memorials, celebrations, art pieces and uplifting quotes, bodies become diary and storytelling bearing witness to life changing experiences, milestones, pleasures and pain, and aesthetic considerations. Elaborated carefully, built on a whim while coming of age, removed or covered up, tattoos epitomize what the creative process consists in: vision, sketching, trials and errors and in the thrill of final printing with an authored contribution to history.
Shifting from subcultures to pop culture, with ‘
nearly half (47%) of millennials [generation born between 1982 and 2004] wearing a tattoo’, the pop movement prefigured the theatrical self of years 2010. And when living in crowded cities, in exile from homeland, or when joining art schools along competitive creative minds, wearing your stories on your sleeves, alike carrying your friends and music in your pocket, or a tree on your shoulder, are ways to belong while being transient, compact, coded, liquid and traceable. The complex self: tethered / untethered might also felt to fight back the overload of corporations grabbing urban space to occupy our brains with their imposed narratives. When the self’ designs its own brand with tattoos and murals, it announces the visual timelines of social media walls where each is offered an expandable space to roll out stories.
None of them knew but all were ready.
All already stood out.
