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• Tattoo: Identity through Ink

Exhibiting now through April 11th

For more than 5,000 years, tattoos have helped document the history of humanity one painful mark at a time. Today, tattoos have never been more popular, but they are so much more than decoration. They are a powerful visual language of the skin, and, like texts, they permanently record memories, life stories, and personal achievements.

Yanyum is a Laju Naga woman Arunchal Pradesh, India) with tattoos that are sacred symbols. She says, “Our ancestors will only recognize us after we die because of our tattoos.” Photograph © Lars Krutak 2008.

Dietzel called three countries home: Norway, where he was born; Canada, where he was shipwrecked; and the United States, where he lived for most of his life. This is a piece of Dietzel’s flash, painted artworks meant to attract potential clients and give them a design to select. Collection of Jonathan Reiter / Solid State Tattoos / Milwaukee WI

Amund Dietzel, a Norwegian sailor who immigrated to America in 1907, learned to tattoo by hand on transatlantic voyages. Dietzel settled in Milwaukee and is one of the most celebrated tattoo artists of the early twentieth century. Collection of Jonathan Reiter / Solid State Tattoos / Milwaukee WI

Tattoo: Identity Through Ink explores the personal and collective acts of human transformation through the tattoo traditions of indigenous peoples and other tattoo communities, past and present. Throughout history, people have applied tattoos to skin in their attempts to beautify, heal, empower, or carry the body into the afterlife. This exhibit shares the ways individual and group identities are formed, reinforced, and celebrated through tattoos.

The exhibit is curated by renowned anthropologist Dr. Lars Krutak. Krutak is a Research Associate at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has authored four books on the subject of indigenous body modification and produced and hosted the Discovery Channel series Tattoo Hunter. In this exhibition, Krutak shares his ongoing journey to understand how ancient and more contemporary tattoos “make” the people who wear them.

For those interested in Scandinavian connections, the exhibit celebrates artists like Norwegian Johan Frederik Knudsen and Norwegian-American Amund Dietzel, explores the question of whether or not Vikings had tattoos, and highlights the rise of the modern Neo-Nordic style of tattooing while putting the Scandinavian history and traditions of body ornamentation in context with many cultures.