TATTOOS

This project focuses on heavily tattooed individuals, particularly women who use tattoos to reclaim and empower themselves. These tattoos, especially remembrance tattoos, serve as symbolic representations of intense life experiences, revealing thus a form of confessional art. The underlying principle and point of reference of my narrative has been Didier Anzieu’s ‘Skin ego” theory. According to Anzieu the principal building block of an individual’s psyche is the skin ego, a mental envelope which protects, defines and unites all the facets of an individual. The “thinking ego’s” development is determined by the skin. ego. At first the skin projects onto the psyche but in the tattooed female the psyche projects onto skin. The skin is in both cases central to an individual’s subjectivity, taking it a step further it is glimpse into the psyche but also protective armour and a boundary. The choice of tattoos is of great significance for it’s through these semiotic inscriptions that these females claim ownership of their body and externalise their inner narrative.