Tattooing has always been about story-telling. Documentary photographer Chris Rainier, who spent seven years on seven continents preparing powerful images of body art (Ancient Marks. San Rafael: Aware, 2004), links it to the tradition of "shaping" stories by altering the Earth's landscape (for example, as the Aboriginal people "pulled" Dreamtime from the Australian outback). The skin, Rainier argues, is a sacred geography, "the interface between the inner and the outer, the intimate and the infinite". In this sense "the human form is the elemental landscape of itself".
The connections between story-telling, the earth's physical design, and body art are highlighted in Rainier's book, in which people – their faces, figures and hands, standing strong or reading quietly – are portrayed in their natural environments. Often the parallels between landscape – barren and harsh, or lush with tropical vegetation – are reflected in tattoo designs. For example, an Angkor Watt monk, one of few survivors of the Khmer Rouge purges, appears with his Buddhist and Khmer-influenced tattoos to echo a sacred statue carved into the rock behind.
Karl-Hendrick Robert, in an essay in Martin Hill's book Earth to Earth (Auckland: Hodder Moa, 2007), blames many of the environmental risks facing the Earth on humanity's "gradual loss of meaningful stories" which "leads to a shrinking of perspective". Artists, he observes, need to reinforce a message of "connectedness ,and why we need nature and each other".
Artists Fight Climate Change
An increasing number of artists are embracing the interdependence theme. Artlink Magazine has devoted an issue to Australian "eco-warrior" artists (such as Chris Mulhearn) whose work "communicates the urgency of action on climate change". On a similar theme, the Suite 101 article New Zealand Art Exhibit About Environment and Society describes a touring exhibition mounted by the Natural World Museum in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, "Moving Towards a Balanced Earth: Kick the (Carbon) Habit.
New Zealand natural sculpture artist Martin Hill works in leaves, rock, water, earth, berries, sand, snow and sunlight to give shape to his circle and spiral motifs, expressing the cyclical characteristic of nature (versus the linear aspect of much that is man-made). "My materials come from the Earth", he observes, "to which they return harmlessly after use".
Tattoos and Connection
So too, some would argue, with the human body. In Flash Art or Mind-Body Connection (a related Suite 101 article), a distinction is made between tattoos as simple decoration, something you might pick up on the street, and significant tattoos, acquired with respect for their cultural origins and the significance of the tattooing process.
Rainer describes the "white magic" tattoos of some Buddhists in South East Asia, made with palm oil rather than ink. These invisible bodymarks are "secret yet enduring talismans offering protection from dangerous forces that haunt the shadowed forest". Such art would represent the antithesis of the tattoo as commodity or personal adornment.
Body Art: From Rebellion to Affirmation
The art and culture of tattooing has come a long way. As recently as 1989, sociologist Clinton Sanders (Customizing the Body. Philadelphia: Temple University Press) noted just the start of a change in the perception that body art was a stigma marking social deviants. "Like homosexuals, the mentally disordered, political radicals, recreational drug users, racial minorities, and other unconventional groups, tattoo artists...are attempting to publicly redefine...the tattoo mark as nonthreatening, unproblematic, and even, admirable".
If tattoos are to take their place with other art forms promoting messages of global interdependence and environmental sensitivity, their design needs to be better than "unproblematic". In the Hill book, chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission Jonathon Porritt observes that "fear begets only paralysis, rather than the kind of purposeful commitment to action...that is now so desperately needed".
So, like other forms of landscape art, the "sacred geography of the skin" invites modifications that celebrate (rather than mourn the imminent loss of) the beauties and cycles of the planet. Many people choose Gaia (Earth-as-Goddess) tattoos, or create designs based on unique flora and fauna in the place that they live. As eco-artist Hill explains, "I work in Nature because we are Nature". And, in the words of Gita Bellin: "If one desires a change, one must be that change".
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