Poetics of the "savage" : practice of tattooing in the modern world

2012

Ancient as it may be the popularity for tattoo does not seem to wane in the West. Indeed, we can find a great number of tattoo studios, exhibitions or magazines in our cities. The iconography of the brand seems to be the result of an amazing syncretism of which the "wild" imagery is an important part. Maori tattoos, Arabic calligraphy, dragons and wild animals, not from Western culture, are indeed very popular patterns. True mode of expressions of the skin, the ethnic tattoo indicates a certain view of the world, a view of the Other, as the path one chooses to follow in order to search for a "sense of self". Since the cabinets of curiosities of the sixteenth century, the Western world colle…