Guanche runes. Lanzarote art in a tattoo

Do you know the Guanche culture of Lanzarote? I'll tell you how a tattoo was able to capture the essence of the island and someone's experience on it.

Tattoos are an art that tries to capture moments, places, sensations, and culture. It is a form of expression and communication. Sometimes we get tattoos simply because we like them aesthetically, but they are also a way to capture stages of our life.

It was artist Marion Tampon-Lajarriette who came up with the idea for this tattoo.

Marion is an excellent visual artist. During his time in Lanzarote, he explored the energy and culture of the island. As a result, he met some passionate ceramists of the Guanche culture, such as José Aradas and José Miguel Clavijo Robayna. They taught him the ancient ceramic techniques of the islands.

Marion captured all these experiences in her exhibition TACANDE, at the Laurence Bernard art gallery in Geneva, Switzerland.

But that was not all he wanted to take from Lanzarote, so he decided that he also wanted to capture that exciting stage of his life on his skin.

I will tell you a little about the Guanche culture and the relationship with its tattoo:

Guanches is the name used to describe Ancient aborigines of the Canary Islands. They have their origin in the Berber peoples of North Africa and are the root of the Canarian culture since before the Castilian conquest in 1496.

To use runes have often been used in many cultures as a form of expression. For example, in the Canarian culture, stamps usually made of clay are called pintaderas and have geometric shapes.

We cannot ascertain with exactitude what "pintaderas" function had. Have been suggested that it could be personal marks to seal the closures of the silos in the granaries. But it is also thought that they could have been used for body decoration by impregnating them with natural dyes.

Isn't it great that one of the original functions of the Canarian painter was tattooing?

Marion opted for two pieces in the shape of a triangle, a very common geometry in Guanche runes. In addition, he wanted to use representative colors of the island, warm for the land and cold for the sea surrounding it.

Also, the chosen tattoo technique was dot-work. For that reason, it was a challenge to saturate colors on the skin while allowing the eye to appreciate this technique. The key was to show the dots of one color on the background of the previous color to give that transition effect between point-to-point colors.

 

What do you think of these tattoos?

I loved being able to make art based on the culture of the Canary Islands, and for that, I am very grateful to Marion for the trust she placed in me for her tattoo.

If you want to know more about the stories behind Yaizart's art, don't hesitate to visit our blog.

And of course, don't miss Marion's art.