A new social trend is currently emerging that warmly embraces the tattoo genre and recognizes its importance. The Tattoos exhibition presents works of art by artists from Israel and abroad who relate to the act of tattooing in various ways of expression and reveal the variety of internal motivations for tattooing in the context of defining personal, national, gender, social, cognitive and spiritual identity.

The exhibition focuses on the ancestral aspect of the tattoo. Tribal cultures are structured in concentric circles, much like the rings of a tree. The individual is situated at the center, enveloped by an outer circle surrounding them: the collective tribal system. This social circle is wrapped in yet another outer circle: the socio-religious system, which expresses the tribe’s cosmogonic and mythological worldview. The tribal totem is an archetypal visual representation of the culture—the focus and heart of the tribe—serving as a collective ancestral tool for personal and social empowerment. It attracts cellular renewal, infinite creation, and a connection between the past and the future. The totem is a dual representation: the founding male/female pair, whose pairing creates culture. The mythical graphic themes that adorn the tribal tattoo are patterns drawn from the totemic language (which is the universal grammar—the symbols and archetypes of the culture). In this context, a tattoo is a kind of “personal totem.” A talisman of memory and an object of empowerment. In the tribal world, a tattoo is part of a shamanic rite of passage and initiation, throughout the stages of life.

Since the dawn of history, the tattooed body has been a means of glorification and personal and collective definition of man. The art of tattooing has its origins in traditions of shamanic rites of passage and initiation in indigenous cultures; every tattoo work around the world contains within it pieces of culture and history and also embodies personal, social, ecological and spiritual values.