The Human Canvas

When thinking about tattoos; old rituals, spiritual journeys, and prison traditions are not generally the first things that come to mind anymore. Tattoo artistry and the purposes and uses behind it has changed drastically in the past even 5 years, we can sometimes forget where this art form has come from and what role it has played in societies around the world. The exhibition that has recently opened at the Royal Ontario Museum titled, Tattoos: Ritual. Identity. Obsession. Art., is a gateway into the past world behind this art form.

Beautiful artwork, not just from around the world, but through the spectrum of time as well, has made it's way into this exhibition, and the array of mediums that this art form has used to be displayed is quite impressive. We can get a glimpse of everything from very stylized paintings done by the artists, to prosthetic bodies and limbs that have been tattooed on, photography that captures major historical moments with different people bearing their tattoos in completely different situations from tribal rituals, to holocaust survivors. We even see old portfolios of travelling tattoo artists and mock-up skins made to hash out the details and placement of the tattoo, videos depicting rituals revolving around tattooing, and actual ancient tattoo machines, some just a stick and a needle showing the good old 'stick-and-poke' method. And of course since history is a large part of this exhibition, each piece is accompanied by an explanatory plaque.

Art form and history have been woven together to create a whole new collected body of work. A video documentation of a spiritual tattoo guru becomes a window into a new and unseen concept to our culture, an old drawn tattoo stencil is framed and remembers an old way of mapping out our bodies to carry these artworks. I do not want to lessen any meaning behind these historical pieces, but when compiled and brought into Toronto's modern structure at the ROM, it not only shows us pieces of the world and history, but turns the entire collection into a separate art piece of it's own.

Seeing as this exhibition has been stitched together from works around the world at all different areas in time, there is the same diversity found in the artists who contributed to these works. Even Thomas Edison is mentioned as an 'accidental inventor' of our now modern motorized versions of the tattoo machine stating that he had "filed a patent for this electric pen" which "the needle produced 3,000 punctures per minute on paper". The variety of beings contributing to this exhibition is only something able to be truly experienced when viewed in person, however I will say that if you're inspired by diverse cultural and historical expression, this would be where to find it.

What I found interesting about this body of work was that rather than expressing a certain message through the art piece itself (or the "what"), the message was conveyed through the "who", "why", and "when". Numbers tattooed onto the arm of a teen nowadays commemorating their eighteenth birthday is something completely different than the numbers tattooed on the arm of a concentration camp survivor representing their entrance into the camp. Either way, the ink on their arm may be similar, but the connection that the individual has to each piece is night and day. This body of work carries out and stresses the importance of the shifts in the tattooing world and how tattoos have changed from time period to time period and culture to culture, right down to person to person.

This sort of exhibition attracts a certain type of demographic, based purely on personal observation, I don't think I have ever seen so many inked bodies in one place, myself also guilty of this trait (this isn't to say that I didn't see many wonderfully blank canvases in the crowd as well enjoying the show as much as the person with two sleeves and a neck piece)). The crowd of spectators contributed in a way to the exhibition, like an art show in itself in motion. The space played a particularly important role with the abundance of people moving through, and reflected the aesthetic artistry of the crowd. On the fourth floor of the museum and seemingly tucked away in a corner of the new structure of the ROM, the exhibition was surprisingly spacious. There were multiple small rooms and nooks in stead of one large space which helped to divert the flow of people coming in, and allowed for the viewer to choose for themselves where to go first. Many of these smaller spaces were odd shapes, and the walls sometimes coming to odd angles flowed well with the still somewhat taboo subject matter.

One of the most satisfying aspects of this show was that the crowd was as diverse as the exhibition that they were viewing, and I would feel as comfortable bringing my grandmother as I would a peer. It was as informative as it was visually stimulating.