FLOATING WORLD TATTOOS

The art of Japanese Tattoo is considered one of the world’s finest body adornments. Before popular acceptance, the practice had its roots in the Edo period (1603-1868) with oath tattoos made for love and with the infamous marking of criminals. The path towards extremely elaborate ornamentation covering large parts of the body remains unknown to the public. 

For two and a half centuries, this evolution was nourished by the cultural life of the ukiyo, this “floating world” in full effervescence despite the censorship imposed by the Tokugawa shogunate.

Support for silent protest, the body became a means of expressing strength and courage for the common people. This social phenomenon became part of the culture of Kabuki theatre, woodprints and books, then passed from light to relative shadow with the prohibition of 1872 thus erasing parts of this memory.

After the end of the prohibition in 1948, especially during the 1960s, the cinema seized on this heritage and associated its image with the yakuza criminal groups that engraving, photography and manga perpetuated. In Japan, this lasting representation fuels the negative perception of tattooing and further limits free access to certain public places.

This exhibition retraces more than three hundred years of history of this ephemeral art, which only lasts a lifetime, whose codes of yesterday inspire those of today. It questions our gaze on the commitment that such an approach requires and on the social identity of the people who mark their bodies.