A celebration of art on skin, tattos in Cambodia

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Post Weekend

Olivier de Bernon, author of Yantra et Mantra, will be speaking on Cambodian ritual tattooing on Saturday February 6 as part of the French Institute’s upcoming exhibition Adorned Body, Transformed Body. The exhibition – first shown at the Perfume Museum in Grasse, southern France – charts the complex and varied history of make-up, body paint, tattoos, piercing and other bodily transformations around the world.

According to Gregory Couderc, one of the exhibition’s co-curators, the magical function of bodily adornment no longer plays a role in Western countries. “In the Occident, tattoos are more or less devoid of magic, even though they may well have emotional significance for the wearer,” he explained via email. “The aesthetics of the pattern outweigh the profound meaning.”

But he said that Southeast Asia was by no means the only place where spirituality and superstition played a part in getting inked: in Papau New Guinea, the Iatmul ethnic group perform scarification during a coming-of-age ritual that mimics the scales of the crocodile god, and in India and the Maghreb, kohl make-up is believed to protect against evil attacks

read more : http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/celebration-art-skin

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The bewitching allure of magic tattoos

Fri, 22 January 2016

Harriet Fitch Little and Vandy Muong

The entrance to You Hak’s cramped tattoo studio opposite Sorya Mall is signposted by a raunchy mannequin plastered with transfer stickers. Its interior is uninspiring, sticky with heat and wallpapered with photographs of the still-sore designs that he has inked on his customers. Dotted among the internationally recognisable tribal sleeves and inspirational quotes in Gothic lettering, a dozen-odd designs stand out: combinations of wiry, tapering spirals, gods, mythical beasts and spidery lettering.

These are sak yant: tattoos whose form and application are believed to protect the wearer against everything from bullets to a mother’s vengeful ghost, depending on the design. The unusual and somewhat other-worldly aesthetics of the sak yant mean that the designation “magic” does not come as a surprise, even to the uninitiated.

read more: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/bewitching-allure-magic-tattoos