At some point when you’re little, you love drawing, you love rock and roll, and you think, “What should I do with my life now?” I guess that’s how tattooing came along for me.
My background is a bit of a patchwork: I grew up in the far south side outside of Paris, split between the 77 and the 91 where my grandparents lived, as home was a little chaotic. Life in the 77 forest of Fontainebleau areas can be very different than the bougie green refuge reputation it likes to uphold, as growing up there lower class is a complete different experience… isolating, and quite mid.
As for the 91, Ris Orangis/Grigny where my grandparents lived, in France you would call these areas banlieue dortoir or cité dortoir – dormitory hoods, reeaallly far away from the city, where it’s just housing estates built for people to sleep.
Somehow, both of these areas carried a similar melancholic vibe; different environments, but both have a heavy grayness hovering on your shoulders. It forces you to build your own world.
Wherever I went, I never really felt like I had a community. Who was I gonna hang out with except internet people when I get back from schooling? Living in that kind of isolation, the internet sort of became my neighborhood. It’s not so foreign to me to have to reach out to other human beings through my computer or my phone.
My work is super inspired generally by internet culture. I used to have blogs on the French version of MySpace called skyrock.fr – that used to be how I expressed myself, my way of getting creative stuff out there to the world.
France is actually the home of gothic architecture — the old churches and cemeteries definitely had some sort of influence on me. I was very much into the macabre and looking the way I do from a very young age. I’ve always loved world building around dark romanticism, existential dread, and what lives in the shadows.
But my style is also kind of… Goofy, if you can say <haha>. It’s not just dark, you know? I’m not a cold goth, I’m a sunny goth. I was meant to be under the sun.
I still love the dark, I just love using crazy colors in my work. The combination represents my soul quite well. Neon colors, I’m a colorful goth.
I used to do a lot of paintings of landscapes, and they had a liminal, melancholic vibe… Loneliness 101…? That definitely fueled my creativity for a while. It was depressing, but it also made me want to create.
For me, tattooing is artisanal as well as art; it’s like providing a service for someone. That sense of craftsmanship made sense to me because I want to provide something to others. It’s very mathematic — a service provided, but also super artsy. But really, that’s what spoke to me at the time.
I did try to go into an apprenticeship in Paris when I was 17, but I bailed on them immediately ’cause it just wasn’t realistic. Apprenticeships in tattooing are known to be a bit of a scabby life where you don’t get paid… I lived in a village with no train station, the shop was in Paris, I didn’t drive, and trains were super expensive. It was a bit of exploitation. I met a girl later on who did her apprenticeship at that shop, and three years later she still hadn’t touched a machine — total gatekeeping. So I just started on my own and got going.
Somewhere down the line I came to London on a whim, did a little guest spot tattooing, and then came back again with no return ticket. It ended up being so much better ’cause I didn’t have the same kinds of opportunities in France, where it’s way harder to survive and a little more conservative regarding body modification. Here in London no one bothers you at all. Paris can be hard, but I love it though, it’s home.
Compared to Paris, I feel like here people can be more experimental and eager to try new things, or really pour into an artist that they like, not just because they’ve already been validated by an institutional crowd. Here it’s full of just “do it:” You like it, show it; you like it, get it.
I feel like I also get to work with people who look like me, just other kids. I’ve been provided with a lot of skin to do whatever I want, people have trusted me with doing crazy stuff on them. It’s really pushing my taste and what I crave and what I like unapologetically.
I’m still trying to find ways to be present elsewhere than online—which is where I succeeded in tattooing, ’cause it’s real. People walk out with my pieces at the end of the day, and they live IRL.
My advice might sound cliché… But really, just be yourself. Do what you love with honesty, try to search from within who you are, and express that to the fullest.
-Iscia Gonzalez for Dead Relatives.
