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Joined: Nov 08, 2004
Posts: 281
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May 1st Sunday NY Times article with the title: Skin Deep: The Art of the Body Language, about Marquesan Island full body tatoos and an announcement of a show at the Metropolitan Museum beginning May 10 entitled: Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands.
"Marquesan artists favored geometric motifs, but they also depicted sacred ancestors on wood, stone, ivory and bone, as well as in tatoos. The images, called tikis, were highly stylized and abstract: art did not imitate nature. The act of creation itself was considered sacred."
"Many tatoo designs featured a tiki, or human image, that typically represented a deified ancestor, often as a stylized face."
The article includes an illustration of a fully tatooed man with matching tiki tatoos on his thighs, and another with a single one in the middle of his back.
And the word tatoo comes from the Marqeusan word tatau.
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