THE HISTORY OF TATTOO IS HARD TO RECOUNT EVENTHOUGH IT’S AN ANCESTRAL PRACTICE WE CAN’T PLACE IT’S ORIGIN..
Among those actions one is really important: creation. Because it is the link of man with nature that he wants to master and dominate for his security
and balance. the craftman get inspired by those special moments and draws designs made with lines and dots; that he will applies on objects or engrave
on the human body as a tattoo.
Tattoo is a way of expression known by the most ancient civilizations. It keeps the trace of a culture that goes into the body and the skin becomes the mediabetween the inside and the outside of the tattooee. When works of art are adorned with the same designs as tattoos, an exceptional symbiosis is created between the body and the object as it is the case in maroccan art. It is clearly different from those practiced in other muslim countries, as in marocco almost half of the country population was tattooed until a few years ago.
Numerous are the men and women that are tattooed, numerous are also the proff of projection of this designs on work of art. An amazing paralel between tattoo and decorative designs on carpets, jewels…
Tattoo is an abstract art aesthetically structured (eventhoug it is made with elemantary lines) that is into a plastical discours under the form of simple geometrical elements organised in visual spacies open or closed but never figurative? the closed visual space is constituated by lines that make elemantary geometrical figures: squares, rectangle, rhombus and more rarely circles. eache of this figures got a name. For exemple the square on carpets is called eddar (house), the triangle el foul (bean), the rhombus el air (the eye), a dot which is in a circle with a plain surface, el hebba (grain).
The open visual space is made of lines that goes in every directions and get associated in numreous ways but without forming any geometrical surfaces at their intersections. Those two figures engraved on the body or on objects wether associated wether isolated in an asymetrical juxtaposition but that fill the adorned surface with an exquisite balance by it composition, harmony and color.
Symbols appear as well as in the oral tadition as in it’s graphic material: designs wich are considered as signs. Those same signs cover the different traditionnal objects as well as the human body. Some of those signs have lost their meaning some still have it. for exemple the tarnaca formed of five dots on the back on the hand are supposed to protect from bad luck, and selsa (a chain) formed with several rhombuses is supposed to protect from the adultary…Some tried to link those designs with the phenician writing, the the berber’s one (the thinafar) but neither of them corresponded to the numerous combination of tattoo.
The place of the tattoo on the body is very variable, depending if it’s a man or women who wears it. For men it can be the nose, the hand, the right arm; in this case it supposed to give to man strengh in dangerous situations. For women several body parts can be tattooed: the forehead, the chin, the cheat, the neck, arm, feet.
Tattoo is made durin family ceremony to mark privileged moment of a life women: puberty, marriage, birth of the firts childe…it is made by a women rarely a men they are not professional but they are asked for their konwledge in the meaning of signs.
Kustomtattoo paris tatouage