The Women Who Rewrote the Body
A rupture from which there is no return.
In recent years, several women in tattooing have permanently shifted the boundaries of art. Not through speeches, but through their work. Not through demand, but through presence.
They no longer illustrate the body — they turn it into language. Through them, tattooing is no longer the decorative gesture of a marginal culture, but a complete expression of contemporary art — living, lucid, irreversible.
After them, one cannot return to an art history without tattooing. And one cannot speak of tattooing without speaking their names.
I could have written, of course, about Frida Kahlo, Tracy Emin, or Georgia O’Keeffe — names that always appear in conversations about women and art. I could have quoted theorists, connecting everything to an already accepted genealogy. But the truth is that what these women tattoo artists are doing today no longer fits that story.
They no longer claim a place in history — they are writing it. Margot Mifflin’s book Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, which described with precision the long struggle of women to reclaim the body as their own, already belongs to the past.
What we see now is a generation that no longer asks for permission, no longer explains, no longer translates.
They no longer tattoo the body as a surface, but as a space for thought. Each line, each texture, each gesture in their work says the same thing: contemporary art has passed through the skin and become irreversibly alive.
Artists
- Nadi — instagram.com/tattooer_nadi
- Espirro_ — instagram.com/espirro_
- Infrababy — instagram.com/infrababy
- Sugarangeltattoo — instagram.com/sugarangeltattoo
- Lee Stewart — instagram.com/_leestewart
- Teodora Tudor — instagram.com/twodoors_open
- Lolamsl — instagram.com/lolamsl
- Bona_tattoo — instagram.com/bona_tattoo
- Sisi Lovelove — instagram.com/sisi.lovelove
Each of them a universe. Each a language that cannot be translated. Each a different way of showing the world that sensitivity and strength do not exclude each other — they reflect one another.
They are the architects of the contemporary body. Each body they touch becomes a work of art.
