Over the years, tattoo artiste Mickey Malani has noticed a sea change in the kind of body art people want to get, writes Ankita Jain
At a time when tattooing wasn’t quite the buzzword in the country and was seen as another punk statement, Mickey Malani’s year-long break from event coordination gave him all the time to carve a niche as an ink artiste. A self-taught professional, he says, “Body art has now become the latest way of expressing oneself. Gen next has taken tattooing to a whole new level. It’s no longer about gangsters, bikers and sailors. Nor is it limited to the bizarre and the downbeat anymore. Tattooing has become acceptable and cool among today’s youth. It has become an artform where the body is the canvas.”
While reclaiming his self-identity, he created some of his best work on himself. He gushes, “It is a compass on my calf from one of my favourite artists (Toni Tattoos) from Bath (UK). I remember I had gone to london for the first time to get advance training, Travelling is learning and this tattoo reminds me that I need to keep going on. Altogether, I have 11 tattoos on my body.”
His designs revolve around Indian culture and religious motifs and accents with Western styling. Throwing light on how the tattoo is slowly becoming an integral part of the fashion industry, he says, “When we do tattoos we try to pen down our clients’ story through our art. I believe the more interest we show in the stories of our clients, it helps us create a design that can go beyond their expectation and come up with a pattern that becomes a fashion statement in itself. At this point of time, we have become confident about using our home-grown styles considering there has been a tradition of folk body art in India. Be it paisley, mandala style or the motifs of rural Gujarat, Bengal and Rajasthan, they have all been recreated in geometric patches. People are so serious that they want to see how a tattoo will look on them 10 or 20 years down the line.”
Asked what changes has he noticed as a tattoo artist in the kind of body art people want to get in India, he says, “Over the period of time there has been more acceptance of this as an artform rather than a fad; people have started to experiment and have an open mind towards getting bigger and modern pieces and not just sticking to the stereotypes. Tattoos are breaking the barrier of culture and religion and converting our client into serious art collectors rather than a random rebel.”
Malani cites Devnagri words as a top trend, particularly among celebrities. “Also, celebrities make a huge impact on people and given the choice of their profession, they prefer to get something simple and elegant but also meaningful.”
Over the past few years, couple tattoos have been all the rage: king and queen crowns, jigsaw puzzles, and of course, getting your partner’s name inked. Adds Malani, “Couples have started to get tattoos that involve more stories of how they got along, making it a theme. Some of them get tattoos done in incomplete halves which make sense only when they pose together.”
He further talks about the techniques being used in tattooing. “The technique has evolved over the centuries, from traditional tools to modern devices. Though some regions of Thailand, China, Japan and New Zealand use the traditional form (bamboo tattooing), most of the modern work is done with coil and rotary machines.”
For Malani, tattooing is a sort of meditation. “You’ve got to have the knowledge of art. Tattooing requires a lot of passion and patience. When you start a piece you can’t just give up, you have got to maintain the same level of intensity. It’s not just an art, but the science of art. You are putting a needle in someone’s body so health safety is something which you need to be completely aware of.”
Malani is inspired by one of his oldest clients. “All of 82 years, she got Hare Krishna Hare Rama written on herself. At the end of the day, it is something that she relates to. That is my takeaway.”
It’s also finally now moving into the age of secret, personal, grown-up tattoos. While the old favourites — angels on shoulders, tribal art on the lower back and Yin-Yang across biceps — are still popular, people also design their own art now. Tattoo artists are constantly asked to come up with unusual concepts. Most people rarely stop at one tattoo – the city average is, in fact, is about five per person.