I am sure most of us have heard and seen tattoos, which are permanent ink markings on the skin, used to represent stories or memories and even an unfortunate lashed out whimsical choice. However, since some cultures seem to glorify the art of marking up the body, what if that gets taken a notch further than doing the body art itself? This is where hand sewing comes in, not eating the needle and sewing by the hand, but sewing on the hand. Body artist David Catá embarks on modifying the human body in a bizarre manner, where he embroils the portraits in his palms.
A Portrait in Pain and Thread
If you’re not grossed out but Hidden cam fakes, here’s a short video – which has gone ‘viral’ and made a lot of news for all the ‘wrong’ reasons that it has 28 million views – making it even worse by wearing the muslin, wants you to sit in your socket and squeak and leaving Catá making floppy – Catá says palm stitching muslin into fancy pictures of people. PLEASE DON’T LET ME CUT MYSELF. Tatoos are about writing somthing permanent on one’s skin- and a more creative form comes in the shape of a threaded needle, stitching the skin with ramie over and over again in place of ink.
Looking at it, one may think it’s a drawing created by stitching—unless and until the person realizes that the artist is not simply drawing over the skin but pulling the thread inside it. This is different from a tattoo, which permanently remains the skin—this stitched piece is temporary. The thread is taken off at some point, although not without having made an imprint of both a physical entity and of an emotional feeling.
Whereas tattoos bear treasure, Cata focuses on the transient aspect of coming together. Every stitch signifies someone dear in his life, mother, sibling, friend, or a teacher suspended in the thread for a while till the thread is taken out, people, so to say, come and go in and out of their lives. It is an inarticulate yet however meaningful feeling of the fact that it is temporary.
The Tattoo Alternative You Didn’t Ask For
This hand-sewing is both fascinating and terrifying 😱 pic.twitter.com/BpWnxrX3wM
— Insider (@thisisinsider) May 11, 2018
You think that tattoos are cool? Sorry but there’s something cooler than that. Tattooing has been a relief compared to making them by hand. It must be very Jurassic for David Catá to take the needle inside his skin and stitch it all. No, it’s not soft on the whole process, that’s not the whole idea. It is unpleasant, which is the point. Such a tension signals that the best cuts are the painful cuts and unfortunately, also gut-wrenching to erase.
As the saying goes, “Art as an embodiment has always concerned itself with extreme meanings”. This though is nowhere near the zenith of what they have done. While ink tattoos are created with permanence in mind, paper sewn portraits are ephemeral. Thread removed? Precise shapes but not quite carved bodies where one can imagine staying and growing old are what are all that remain.
So I had the privilege of speaking to some tattoo artist named Rachel Hughes who had some opinions about the odd use of the very body for creation: “Tatoos are primarily envisaged as a lasting image, in fact, there’s this – I don’t know how to describe it. It’s such rawness, such intimacy, and such temporariness that it is almost more thrilling. Although I wouldn’t advise you attempting it unless you have a high pain threshold”.
Actually Putting Memories Together…On The Face
Cata’s art, if one might call it so, is not only interesting to the eye. It’s meaningful. The act of stitching his face onto his skin is a form of embracing bonding with people. Relationships, just as thread stitches in one’s skin, may at times be unpleasant but they help in holding us together. Only today there are no more threads to hold the pieces. Only memories and scars remain.
In contrast to tattoos, which are permanently embedded in the skin, Cat??´s sewn art conveys the idea of relationships being akin to the shaping thread of sewing — something temporary. The thread is cut away, the marks blotted and you move on. It speaks volumes about what the execution of the work suggests about the nature of human bonding. With the added irony that it’s also very beautiful—and somewhat quite scary.
A Good End or A Painful One?
Most women are women, they will simply content themselves with tattooing or framing the images of their partners. Well, Catá’s work encourages us to contemplate the way we use artifacts to remember relationships. As an example, is it necessary to emphasize the absence of the person by applying such a permanent, physical scar on the body? Or would creating something ephemeral that is analogous to how the people we love also eventually fade away be much deeper?
Of course, this art may not be everybody’s cup of tea. It is extreme, it is graphic, and it is certainly not for the faint of heart. But in a culture where tattoos are almost a norm, there is hand sewing that makes many people wonder about tattooing as bodily representations. It is a more petite and fundamental way of body art that leaves people wondering what constitutes a mark.
