A friend once jokingly described giving someone a stick and poke tattoo because the equivalent of the exchanging of wedding rings, in that it will probably be so necessary and intimate that it signals the start of a lifelong bond between two people. Body art can often help us make sense of ourselves. Whether it’s projecting who we’re on the within out into the world via our skin, or using tattoos as a way of navigating, accepting, and ultimately loving our bodies – a practice particularly necessary to those whose bodies are sometimes marginalised, so women, POC, plus size and queer people for instance.
But although the chances of tattooing might be radical, the industry often isn’t — and might at times feel overwhelmingly homogeneous. From unpaid apprenticeships, to a cis-straight white male dominated culture surrounding the artform that has result in #MeToo style campaigns launched to tackle inappropriate behaviour inside the industry, those who tattoos are sometimes most important for, as a tool for self-liberation, can often feel excluded from the rigid culture that engulfs the practice.
Nonetheless, a recent guard of queer, non-binary and trans artists want to change the connotations around body art, and push it beyond infinity symbols, anchors and culturally appropriative stereotypes. Not only are they fostering a protected space while undertaking their work, by ensuring consent is continually given by the client to begin, proceed, or maintain contact with the their body – and that client’s needs are put before artistic ego, something that may often result in a sense of lack of autonomy for those being tattooed. Also they are catering to all skin tones and body shapes to thrust back against the racism and discrimination often seen within the industry at large, in addition to purposefully pushing forward queer imagery in tattoos. Moving away from the ‘American traditional’ style aesthetic dominating the industry, these artists challenge notions of taste in how we decide to brighten our bodies. Below we chat to 4 tattooists pushing the industry away from its current restrictive form and setting a more inclusive, inspiring agenda.
Steph Linn
Despite graduating from Central Saint Martin’s earlier this yr with a level in knitwear design, it was tattooing that first ignited non-binary artist, Steph Linn’s creative flame. “I did my first tattoo after I was 15/16, and from there I just starting giving ones to my friends. I didn’t take it seriously until five years ago after I moved to London (from the U.S) and other people began to ask me for them, which is after I really began to get my technique down,” they explain. Refusing to be limited to 1 specific medium of artistic expression, be it design, clothing, or tattooing, Linn says that, “different skills really influence the way in which I draw. For instance, you could have to attract a certain way for a screenprint to look good, or a certain way for it to look good in knit – and so manipulating the way in which you draw for various mediums really pushes you to experiment. I prefer to think that each skill I learn is getting me towards making a seamless universe.”
With their knit design work thematically exploring the non-binary experience, Linn’s approach to tattoo work isn’t as clear cut. “Once I’m drawing flash (which I do not do much) I do not think to myself like, ‘Okay here’s my non-binary and queer themed flash — but I do mainly tattoo queer and non-binary people. I suppose it’s more incorporated in the tactic slightly than the aesthetic.”
For Linn, it’s incredibly necessary to cultivate inclusive communities around their work; whether shining a light-weight on the non binary experience through their graduate collection, or continually checking in on their clients to make sure their physical boundaries and desires are at all times put first when tattooing. “It’s super necessary to create a substitute for Western bro tattoo culture,” Linn asserts. “Individuals are creating the spaces they need, for themselves and for his or her community.”
Charline Bataille
Along with her luridly-coloured tattoos earning her nearly 100,000 Instagram followers, Charline Bataille is proof of the large appeal and desire for non-traditional tattoo designs. “My tattoos are very disrespectful of the principles of tattooing, lines are wonky and colors are funky and it definitely doesn’t have tradition or perfect healing as a priority.” The Montreal-based artist accepts that her approach to tattooing is, “very different than older generations of Western tattooists that obviously were driven by machismo values like gatekeeping and the thought of single truth.” Championing plus size people and perceived ‘imperfections’ akin to stretch marks and body hair, through her illustrative style — developed from her background in illustration, painting, and patch-making — Bataille’s aesthetic is maybe most easily described as part fucked up children’s book, part queer utopia.
Using her own work to debate the importance of ‘queering’ the industry, Bataille finds the facility in obscuring and altogether disregarding notions of beauty to create a twisted, wonderful world held together by the artwork she embroiders on people’s skin. “Art and the dismantling of hierarchy of art is significant — and necessary for queer people for purposes like connecting, feeling seen, feeling valid, and feeling worthy. It’s a type of harm reduction, as being represented within the media is significant.” She continues, “It’s necessary to open up what a ‘good’ tattoo is, as there may be increasingly various kinds of people getting tattooed. Truthfully I don’t have any fucks to offer to tattooers complaining about change, your time is up and that’s great, power to the freaks to be honest.”
Flora Fauna
After moving into tattooing by accident, Montreal-based, French-born Flora Fauna began inking their friends’ bodies with “tender handpokes” after a late-night conversation led to pulling out a needle, drawing ink, and just going for it. “I grew up in an environment that felt somewhat rigid and definitely not keen on bypassing rules. The Asian side of my family has at all times expressed slight outrage and horror on the considered body modifications. So, after I moved out of home and to Canada, I realised tattooing is something you’ll be able to actually do yourself.” Fascinated with the thought of this small transgression, and after feeling excluded from the standard industry resulting from “extremely intimidating and emotionally sterile environments”, they got down to cultivate probably the most caring environment possible when tattooing each friends and clients. Tattooing from their bedroom, Fauna says, “welcoming clients into my home means I put trust into people I do not know to return right into a place that is very special to me while they put trust in me to without end mark them with something that could be very special to them.”
“It was necessary for me to establish an intentional space that may treat tattooing as a somewhat sacred moment and a deeply personal experience.” They explain, “speaking for myself, a non-white, non-binary person, I believe tattooing takes on all its meaning when it transcends aesthetic experience and becomes symbolic. The undeniable fact that tattooing isn’t a pain free process, and that you simply first have to lose some comfort to afterward gain some when your body could be very cathartic.” Taking a DIY approach to the craft, Fauna’s work is the tattoo equivalent of a hug from an old friend — warm, soft, and filled with love with each jab of the needle.
Dominic Myatt
Like many other tattooists working outside of the standard industry, London-based Dominic Myatt isn’t restricted to inking skin in his artistic practice. “Tattooing, for me, is initially just one other medium for mark making, however it feels different in some ways since it sits outside of the standard classical effective art mediums.” Myatt muses, “it’s also extremely traditional within the sense that it’s been around almost as long ancient cave paintings.” Together with his other projects spanning a book illustrating men’s Craiglist hookup ads, to an exhibition based around a nudist beach, and his ongoing collaboration with London design duo Art School, on the subject of tattooing what most interests him about this medium is “the performative element of the tattooing, less so the ritual of it, but more the motion of placing a drawing onto/into someone.”
Crediting social media for opening up each artists and audience to the widening scope of what’s possible inside the tattoo world, Myatt’s focus is on translating his exploration of marks, lines, and irregularity from a effective art setting and right into a real-life one, and proving that tattooing “has just as much scope as drawing does in a effective art space akin to a gallery. “ Explaining that it’s necessary for people to give you the chance to interrupt down what tattooing is, and expand representation to stretch beyond “vectorised copy and paste Sailor Jerry tattoos of cobwebs and playing cards”, Myatt’s work — each on skin and on paper — deals with abject abstractions of erotica and queerness inside that through daring line work that each emphasises and obscures the body and it’s sexuality .
