Tattoo: A Perspective Beyond Estethics

Over the past 20 years, tattoos have become extremely popular in Western countries, spreading among several audiences and becoming a very popular form of body modification. Through the centuries, body modification has been an important part of human´s life as an expression of the self. Until recently, tattoos were exclusive to marginalized groups such as sailors, prostitutes, and criminals, and portraying a tattoo was motive for being prejudiced. It was not until the 60’s that tattoos assumed a new role in our society. First, as an expression of self-identification of youth movements and lately as a cultural phenomenon of body embellishment. Today, tattoos are increasingly seen as a form of art adorning the human canvas and, as such, tattoos compete in the body adornment industry. Our videography sets out to uncover the meanings associated with the tattooing consumption experience. In our journey, we found that the tattooed body is seen by their owners as a canvas or as a media. When the body serves as a canvas, the tattoo is an expression of art whose pure objective is the body embellishment; the symbolic meaning attached to the tattoo can be extremely important or not important at all – in this case, the tattooing is just the art for the art’s sake. When the body serves as a media, the tattoo expresses the cultural, religious, philosophic, gender, sociological, and political ideology of the owner and the defining aspect of the tattoo is its meaning. Interestingly, due to its perenniality, the tattoo is re-signified as the individual matures and a canvas can be transformed into a media and vice versa – the art becomes an ideology and the ideology becomes an art.