Indelible / Ephemeral: Collecting the Commemorative Tattoo through Contemporary Print and Ceramic Practices

Tattoos have been described as ‘visual artefacts’, facilitating identity formation, community belonging, commemoration and wellbeing. As indelible yet ultimately ephemeral inscriptions on the body, tattoos operate as archives of psychosocial and sociocultural memory, reflecting the cultural values and lived experiences of their time of creation. In an era of ‘liquid modernity’, the contemporary tattoo stands to communicate intangible cultural heritage, however despite their renowned permanency, the tattoo’s lifespan is tied to the mortality of its wearer, and without preservation, their invaluable insights will inevitably be lost to posterity.
This paper examines how contemporary creative art practices can offer alternative strategies to collect and preserve the visual and narrative insight of tattoo imagery. Adopting an art historical and practice-as-research approach, the project explores tattoos through the lens of ceramic and print-based forms by transforming their visual and embodied narratives into tangible objects that can exist beyond their natural lifespan. In doing so, the artistic object becomes both a recording medium and an archival material, capable of preserving not only tattoos’ visual aesthetics, but recontextualises them as collectible, archivable artefacts, ensuring that their cultural and affective meanings remain accessible to future generations.