The art market was never about art. It was about ownership, signature, scarcity — the illusion of value. For decades, tattooing remained outside this logic, too intimate, too direct, too alive to be traded.
Now, that exclusion has become its strength. What could not be sold became the last authentic form of contemporary art. The body replaced the canvas; the studio became the skin. No intermediaries. No institutions as we knew them. No preservation.
The refused are not victims. They are the foundation of what comes next — an art that circulates through flesh, memory, and blockchain, not through the white walls of speculative capital.
The Museum of Contemporary Tattoos is not asking for a place within the art world. It is building the world that comes after it.
