Expert: Jeni Andrews-Fraser - 5/28/2007

Question
What is the importance of having tattoos in different cultures around the world, and what do they represent?

What are the different cultures that use tattoos as symbols?

What is the most common type of tattoo, and how is art involved in the process?

Answer
Hello Tanis - and thank you for your question, although I do not have the expertise to answer it.  You need to investigate cultural anthropology to answer your first two questions.  As for the third, I would have no idea what the most common 'type' (I presume you mean 'image') of tattoo is -- ask a tattoo artist (there must be something on the internet about it, and it is probably culturally-driven: a New Yorker's influences are far, far different from a Maori's); art is involved in the process because art, simplistically put, is image making -- and tattoo (or body) artists make images using the skin as their canvas.  Your questions are far too involved for this forum - so I suggest you refine your lines of enquiry after having undertaken some preliminary reseach into (a) the cultures that interest you and,(b) the anthropology and iconography of that/those cultures(s).  Good luck