Tattoo

What does tattoing mean? Why do people tattoo today? Are they moved by personal and solid choices or by light-hearted decisions made because “everyone is doing it today”? And, most importantly, what stories lie behind a mark, forever “ours”?

A tattoo can be a message to show to the world, an ornament that persuades and makes us believe that we are unique, a vow or a playful souvenir, a mark of belonging or a declaration of independence, a proof of love or the processing of a grief.

These social and cultural reflections have aroused the interest of the museum, wanting to deepen the knowledge of practices, rituals, shapes and means of expression that can be found in any age and place of Earth – from antiquity to the present – through an exhibition addressing tattooing from a historical, anthropological and cultural perspective, starting from the places where its first evidence was found: the Mediterranean basin.

The unprecedented exhibition “Tattoo. Tales from the Mediterranean,” produced by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE and promoted by the Municipality of Milan – Culture Department, curated by Luisa Gnecchi Ruscone and Guido Guerzoni, with the collaboration of Jurate Francesca Piacenti, traces the history of tattooing, from prehistoric evidence to the present day, particularly focusing on the Mediterranean area, but also displaying non-European materials that facilitate the comparison of a global phenomenon.

Throughout the millennia, in fact, tattoos have gradually taken on different forms, meanings and functions: in the past, some people voluntarily chose to be tattooed to prevent and treat diseases, to declare their rank, to express their faith or celebrate rites of passage, while others were forced to be tattooed to bear permanent marks of infamy, as for example slaves, defectors or convicts.