Memorial tattoos seem to occupy a strange middle ground in our societal relationship with the sacred. They’re like ‘oh yeah, that’d be cool’…I can’t speak for everyone but…If your loved ones you left behind have similar values about it…you’d have something that is very uniquely that person.” Megan Rosenbloom, author of the book Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, says the practice is something tattooed people might appreciate: “When you talk to tattoo people about ‘would you wanna preserve your tattoos forever…it doesn’t seem to gross them out. The end result looks something like papyrus, and if someone is open to it can be a valuable keepsake. Once that’s done, the skin is sealed in high-quality glass to protect and preserve the art, then framed. The tattoo can be an externalization of the wearer’s grief, a physical marker that helps separate it from the person emotionally.Īnother practice that started before the pandemic is preserving the tattoos of a loved one after death.Ĭompanies like Save My Ink Forever work with funeral homes and crematories, sending them a “recovery kit” with all the required equipment needed to carefully remove and process the tattooed areas of a person’s skin. Schiffrin argues that memorial tattoos can serve a similar purpose to grieving rituals by inviting conversation about the story, and thus the person, behind the art. Participants in an Irish wake throw a party in honor of the deceased’s life and get to see that person out of their homes for the final time before they’re buried.īoth rituals provide a framework people can use to deal with the emotions they’re feeling and be supported by members of their community. The week after a death, called Shiva, is spent remembering the events that led up to the deceased’s death as well as the events of their life. Schiffrin mentions the Jewish tradition of Kriyah (also spelled Kriah), where clothes or a black ribbon worn on someone’s clothing are torn to represent the internal anguish of losing a loved one. The paper notes that Western society as a whole has largely left behind public grieving rituals connected with death and mourning. In her 2009 Masters thesis for Smith College, Eliza Schiffrin explores the memorial tattoo as a kind of modern mourning ritual. In some cases people will even get a very small amount of cremains mixed into the ink, allowing them to carry a piece of their loved one with them forever, in much the same way someone else would carry a locket. ![]() People are not only marking their survival through the pandemic, but also their losses with memorial tattoos. Funny or serious, they’re a ( sometimes literal) declaration of survival. People who get these tattoos are literally marking this moment in time on their skin. ![]() Most of them are similarly themed: plague doctors, bottles of sanitizer, and masked nurses are all common. Now he says he’s booked at least a year out,“I’ve never been this busy in my 25 years of tattooing,” said Sky, “My advice would be to make your tattoo plans well in advance, because everybody is slammed.” People are, Sky said, “living out their tattoo dreams” as restrictions ease.Ī search for the hashtag “ covidtattoo” on Instagram reveals over 3,200 posts, as of this writing. A few weeks later, the pandemic forced the shop to shut down. ![]() Adam Sky opened Morningstar Tattoo in Belmont, California in January 2020.
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