The Marseille museums present at the center of the old charity “Tattoo – Stories of the Mediterranean”, an exploration of tattooing practices over the centuries, from antiquity to contemporary culture.
Constantin Jean Marie Prévost, Tattoo of the sailor, around 1830, oil on canvas © Mairie de Toulouse, Musée des Augustins
Alireza Shojaian, Sharok and Arthur, series “Under the sky of Shiraz”, 2022, painting © Bing XU Collection
An evolution through centuries and cultures
Since the first traces found in Egypt, Syria and the Cyclades then in Greece, Tattoo in the Mediterranean has crossed the agesaccording to medical, religious, political or aesthetic uses, to become with modernity An artistic expression in its own right, fueled by pop culture.
The exhibition retraces this evolution, From ancient tattoo to current influencesnotably in the Marseille city where he has also become the expression of Marseille identity.
A transdisciplinary exhibition
Paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, fashion and everyday objects mark out the route offered to visitors, mixing the contributions of the history, of the history of art, archeology, ethnology and anthropology. The gaze is also on the contemporary Marseille variations of the tattoo and its place in The imaginations of pop culture.
Dalila Dalleas Bouzar, Les Princesses, 2015-2016, Oil on canvas © Photo: Grégory Copitet. Courtesy of the artist and gallery Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris)
A focus on artists around the Mediterranean
Extending a research initiated in 2023 as part of the exhibition “Baya – an Algerian heroine of modern art”, the exhibition also gives a central place to the artists around the Mediterranean who drew from the patterns of the tattoo a formal repertoire to feed the avant-garde as well as feminist and decolonial currents from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt or Iran.
Unpublished works of personalities such as Choukri Mesli, Samta Benyahia, Farid Belkahia, Lalla Essaydi or El Meya will be presented to the public, alongside two drawings by artist Ahmed Cherkaoui made in 1967 and acquired by the city of Marseille in 2024.
The route will finally present an unprecedented work by the Algerian artist Denis Martinez, specially designed on the occasion of this exhibition on the picture rails of the center of old charity. One of the founders of the Aouchem avant-garde group (literally Tattoos) in the Mitan of the 1960s lives today between Blida and Marseille.
In partnership with 24 Ore Cultura and the Museo Delle Culture (MUDEC) in Milan and benefiting from the exceptional support of the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum, the exhibition “Tattoo – Mediterranean stories” benefits from important loans of national and international institutions, such as the Louvre museum, the Musée d’Orsay, Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden de Leyde, the Munich glyptohtek, the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, in dialogue with the heritage collections preserved by the Marseille Museums network.
See all exhibitions in 2025 in the Museums of Marseille
Photo and Haut de Page © Anne van der Stegen – Marseille in the skin – Photography
