“A tattoo should always be more than an embellishment.
It should be a piece of art, telling a story. Your story.”
Tattoos
Please have a look at my social media channels for many more of those
Gabriel
Over the last decade, I have created tattoo designs for well over a thousand Jews (as well as many Christians), on all 5 continents. Have a look at the map above. At each of those points, someone had a work of mine tattooed by some great tattooist.
Each of those tattoos is the expression of a singular story, puristically using only Hebrew letters. Listening to all those stories, I came to understand that Jewish visibility is something a lot of us secular, reform and masorti Jews are concerned with.
Identity, above all collective identity, is a reflective process: I understand myself through the eyes of others. But when an important part of my identity is hidden from the eyes of those others, that process is interrupted.
We understand ourselves through the eyes of others
Until a generation or two ago, we didn’t have that issue. We were marked by our Kippas and Shtreimels, and at times by our yellow badges. We lived mainly in our communities. Most of us didn’t struggle with questions of identity and those who did, did so because they tried to assimilate.
In today’s individualist world, collective identity, in fact, identity in general, is something most of us have to actively persue. Marking myself as a Jew is an almost inevitable first step in that direction. A tattoo is just one way. One attempt. But it’s an attempt, nonetheless.
But why letters?
read my artist statement here
Tattoo stencils
my art, ready to be tattooed by my clients’ tattooists. Click on the work, to read some of the stories that inspired them.
Please have a look at my social media channels for many more of those