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Berber Tattooing: in Morocco's Middle Atlas

£9.9£99Clearance
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Tattooing in North Africa is an ancient practice that pre-dates Islam, and is still relatively common among the Amazigh women of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. This operation was very painful, then I waited for a week until there was a crust on my face, then I removed it, at this time we can see the final result of the tattoo." He already saw the inevitability of this in the 1990s, as popularity is bound to grow in almost any field. He always said that competition is a good thing, as it can only bring forth a better quality of work in the end. I believe he would have regretted the loss of the circus flavour, the rebel and outsider atmosphere of tattooing. This is what had attracted us to it in the first place.Much more than aesthetic, Amazigh tattoos are a means of expression and relieving the vagaries of life and a sign of identity and belonging.

Within Amazigh ( Berber culture) women were historically tattooed facially. In times pre-dating the arrival of Islam in North Africa the practice was widespread. However since the arrival of the Islamic faith, the belief that to alter a creation of Allah is haram ( forbidden) has lead to the almost complete decline of the practice. Berber Tattooing” is a unique and tender record of the tribal skin art of Morocco’s Middle Atlas. The result of a series of chance encounters, Felix & Loretta’s Leu’s road trip in 1988, opened a doorway into the intimate world of the women of the Berber tribes. In this book, the women tell their individual stories. It revealed the traditions of the tattoo in their culture, together with insights into the lives that they led. Sensitively captured in drawings from the time by Aia Leu, the faces of the Berber women speak of a tribal culture that was fast disappearing even then. As tattoo artists, Felix and Loretta found common ground with the Berber families, gaining unprecedented access to this sparsely documented Berber art form. This book of previously unpublished work, collected nearly thirty years ago, is a tribute to the art of tattoos, tradition, family, and love. The first of the facial tattoos is called ‘siyala’ and is on the chin. Siyala often takes the form of a symbolic palm tree tattoo which consists of a simple straight line from the bottom of the lip to the bottom of the chin. This line would sometimes be flanked by dots representing seeds.

For Amazighs, tattoos are generally transmitted from generation to generation, practised by expert women in the Chaouia villages. In the oases of the South, it seems that the women from the same family tattooed each other. They view these tattoos as a relevant rite of passage which are added at key stages in their lives. The ‘siyala’ is drawn on the chin. It symbolises the palm tree. Despite this deep-rooted history, the practice is dying out due to a mixture of increasing religiosity and the spread of western fashions.

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