TATTOOS

What to say about tattoos, I have always liked to see them, especially the Polynesian, Japanese, Chinese, most of them seem to me a work of art and, as such, have been presented in an exhibition that I recently attended in a museum, the Caixa Forum.

I learned that Ötzi, preserved in the ice of the Alps for some fifteen hundred years, was already tattooed, as well as other mummies found in various parts of the planet. These tattoos would reveal, as they do today, social, religious, magical, political, medicinal indications, as a mark of ownership or punishment, etc.

The word "tatau" comes from Samoan and means to link, to unite, but also to mark, to strike.

For a time and in conquering civilizations they were confined to the street, the army, the prison or the circus. For example, until 1871, British soldiers who deserted were marked with a letter "D" for (desertion) or with the letters "BC" for (Bad Character), or in 1920 many Armenian women who had managed to escape to Syria from the genocide of their people were forced into prostitution and to identify them and prevent their escape, pimps tattooed their arms and faces.

The Nazis also tattooed a classification number on the forearm of their concentration camp prisoners. During the Vietnam War, recruits of the South Vietnamese army were tattooed with a "Sat Cong" (death to communists) to prevent them from changing sides and in Iraq, after the Gulf War (1991) deserters, conscientious objectors and all those who had helped them were punished by having part of their ear cut off and an "X" tattooed between their eyes.

Tattooing in prisons, for example the Russian prison, the "cholos", Yakuza, etc., is like a criminal identity card, each motif has a very specific meaning.

As for exhibiting these marks as an entertainment phenomenon, the explorers brought tattooed "savages" from the West Indies or other distant countries and exhibited them; there were also Indians who tattooed their prisoners and, especially in the USA, profusely tattooed men and women were exhibited as freaks at a fair.

In Japan, the so-called "Horimono" (engraved images) have a curious origin, in the Edo period it was usual for prostitutes and their clients to swear fidelity to each other by tattooing a point where the thumb of the other rested when shaking hands.

Occasionally, lovers also tattooed the name of their beloved on their arm.

But little by little, tattooing evolved and spread to the rest of society. In Europe, George Burchett was one of the first to open a tattoo parlor and soon there were conventions in which artists as outstanding as Horiyoshi III, Felix Leu, Ed Hardy, Mario Barth, etc. gathered. Some figures have tattooed royalty, actors or actresses, such as Angelina Jolie, who helped to revive tattooing in Thailand, when she let Ajarn Noo Kanpai decorate her back in 2003, and there has also been a revival of traditions in Aotearoa (New Zealand), with its Ta Moko and other countries such as the Philippines, with the last Kalinga woman named Whang-Od, passing the baton to two of her young nieces.

Today it is so fashionable that it is rare not to see someone tattooed. Despite being a painful and risky process, (not only because of venereal diseases that can be transmitted, but also because there are banned inks that are used despite being carcinogenic, allergies, etc.). It remains exceptional, yes, to find people with a full body or face tattoo is still a bit taboo but, there have been and there are, for example the late Rick Stephan Genest, who at age 15 was operated on a brain tumor, which earned him the nickname "Zombie Boy" and who went to the tattoo artist Frank Lewis, who gradually tattooed his entire body or, the Spanish Lidia Reyes.