Pakistan: Breaking taboos through tattoos

DW (English)

Tattoos are generally frowned upon in the Muslim-majority country — and if a woman is involved with them, it draws even more ire. But one artist is helping to change perceptions of both this art form and gender.

Transcript

00:00So I'm not actually catering to the public masses like that, it is a niche and I'm catering

00:10to the niches and the niches only know about me.

00:24I started getting my tattoos 20 years ago.

00:27So when I used to come to Pakistan, interact with people, people were shocked.

00:31And now that shock doesn't exist anymore, more people are getting tattoos, more freedoms

00:37are allotted to people.

00:43Surprisingly, I haven't had to market my own work as such, it's a very word of mouth business,

00:54one person comes and gets a tattoo and through them I get like three more clients.

01:03I encourage them to go to different people and try out different hands because everybody

01:07is good at something else, which also brings new kinds of artworks in the field.

01:15I do eventually see myself as pricing my artworks that are now my tattoos as similarly as I

01:28used to price my paintings before.

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