The tattoo world at the time was dominated by a largely underground network of bikers, skinheads and body modification enthusiasts - sharp contrast to the broad acceptance that tattoos have in Western culture today. With Hardy’s encouragement, Zulueta went to work trying out his tribal designs, mostly on Los Angeles punks. (Hardy’s name is better known to the general public for the namesake clothing line that licensed his name and art.) Then, in 1980, he did his first tattoo - on his own calf, under the supervision of his mentor, Don Ed Hardy, the legendary tattoo artist. (The word “tattoo” comes from the Polynesian word “tatau.”)Īccording to Lars Krutak, an anthropologist who has studied Indigenous tattooing in about 35 countries, tattoos in those cultures were frequently used to signify tribal identity, as well as to mark rites of passage.Īt first, Zulueta displayed his riffs on a handful of these designs in a San Francisco gallery. Zulueta, who is Filipino American, grew up in Hawaii and developed a passion for collecting old images of Indigenous tattoo designs from Southeast Asia and Polynesia, traditions that are several thousand years old. That is the cultural period Aesthetics Wiki defines as “Y2K,” an era that is in the process of being strip-mined by cool internet people under 30 for outfit ideas, design trends and general vibes. Just as those seeking tribal tattoos 20 and 30 years ago were drawn to the aesthetics of an exoticized, ancient culture, so too are many of the new, Gen Z tribal fans: specifically, to the years 1997 to 2004, and their curious folkways. “Sometimes there will be a week of nothing but tribal,” said Bast, 30, whose long hair and neo-Deadhead style give him the look of an Online Ceramics model. Others are a new twist on the old patterns, idiosyncratic to individual tattoo artists. Some of them look like they’ve been lifted straight out of Woodstock ’94 (or ’99). On arms, legs and torsos from Los Angeles to London and from Santiago, Chile, to Seoul, South Korea, spiny tribal shapes climb hip bones, cross chests and crawl up necks. Today, thanks to the alchemy of the long-term trend cycle and the social media algorithm, tribal tattoos are making a return. His range of personal imagery and projects are presented in the form of personal photographs, texts, hand-drawn tattoo “flash,” tattoo-inspired drawings, and a large-scale mural created specifically for GRAM’s lobby.Maybe not. The exhibition’s narrative format draws on Zulueta’s personal and cultural history, as well as the historical cultures that greatly influenced his work.
Zulueta, Hawaiian born of Filipino heritage, describes his bold, all-black designs as “a style of tattooing that is influenced by the various indigenous tribes that have tattooed over the last thousand years.” Zulueta always creates his own designs that are unique to the individual wearer, considering it “disrespectful to copy traditional designs exactly… without having any personal relationship to these cultures.”īlack Waves: The Tattoo Art of Leo Zulueta is a visual biography of the man largely responsible for the popularization of tribal tattooing. The bold designs hold symbolic significance, with each nation developing their own motifs characterized by stylistic geometric patterning, at times covering all areas of the wearer’s body. In Pacific Rim Nations, tattooing exists as much more than simple body adornment.
He began to develop his own designs inspired by these traditional Pacific Rim motifs, and has been tattooing his own clients since 1981. With the encouragement of tattoo master Don Ed Hardy, Zulueta immersed himself in the visual designs and cultural significance of Pacific Rim nations, such as Samoa, Micronesia, Borneo, Fiji, and the Marquesas Islands. Leo Zulueta is a pioneer of what is generally called tribal tattooing, a dominant trend of the contemporary tattoo scene that took root in the United States in the late 1970s. The word tattoo derives from the Polynesian term, tatau.
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