peterSunday News Reporter, Caroline Mutsawu
BEAUTY usually comes with costs such as plaiting the hair to get a new style or getting a new piercing. But what about piercing the skin and submitting a particular kind of ink which changes the colour of the pigment in the epidermal layer to make a mark for beautification or remembrance of any particular memory, sad or happy. Research has shown that globally, humankind has practiced tattooing since Neolithic times arguably, around 720 A.D when Japan took an approach of punishing criminals explicitly.
Those who committed the most severe offences would have their foreheads tattooed for civilians to witness the kind of person they are. With time and across nations, people started venturing in tattooing for different reasons such as curing of diseases, protecting against spirits, reflecting personality traits such as bravery and spotting a criminal.
Nowadays, people have mixed feeling about tattoo art depending on their backgrounds and beliefs. It is often frowned upon by Christians who refer to the Bible where God forbade people against tattooing in Leviticus 19:28 which reads; “You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves.”
But that’s as far as Christians. Other people from different cultural and religious backgrounds have embraced the art as a way of expressing themselves or just for beautification and as a fashion trend and with improved technology it has become easy to do. And the trend of tattooing is growing with people getting tattooed daily, love birds celebrating love with matching tattoos, one getting their favourite verse marked on their chest or rather one getting a gun tattoo as a bravery trait.
Some have names of their lovers or children inscribed on different parts of their bodies while other for different reasons have dragons. Sunday News spoke to a tattoo artist — Mthabisi Ngazimbi (24) aka ‘Emtee’, a student of Tourism and Hospitality at Bulawayo Polytechnic who has a 0.68 mm pistol marked in black ink on his hand. He fell in love with tattooing his own body before taking it as a profession. Ngazimbi, quite acquainted in art work enjoys custom work and noted it was what gained him prominence and loyalty among his customers.
The artist resides in Manningdale, Bulawayo where he set his tattoo studio in his home at the backyard garage. Linking his art with the programme that he is doing, Ngazimbi says he will one day become a chef and show his artistic skills with food. “Art is art, even with food one can still reveal their artistic talents and so, I do likewise,” he said. The most jaw dropping scenario is seeing Ngazimbi engraving tattoos on his own skin with a lot of precision.
“It takes time to draw my own tattoos but again when I show people the end result, not many believe me until they witness it,” he said.
The artist began tattooing himself in 2016 driven by the ‘dolphin’ tattoo incident. “I fell in love with tattoo art when I spotted a neat dolphin tattoo on this girl from my school. The dolphin looked real and oh, I wanted one real thing,” he said.
Ngazimbi said the tattoo looked as though it was on paper thereby revealing a new chapter in his life. “It was shaded blue as though under water and looking like it would swim off her body. At that moment I had no tattoo and knew, I had to get one. One made by me, and one done by me.”
And like wise, he did. He added that people fear getting tattoos due to religious beliefs that associate tattoos with the dark world. “What people do not understand is a tattoo can be removed and one returns back to normalcy,” Ngazimbi enlightened.
Most people that visit Ngazimbi’s studio are youths ranging from 18 to 30 years. He mentioned that older people usually ask him to remove the tattoos or cover up tattoos that had bad memories or were not neatly done.
“A real artist is exposed when one desires to cover up a tattoo as that is challenging and I love a challenge because I am an artist,” he said. Ngazimbi said the pressure gets to him so much on some days as he gets three to four customers all needing tattoos at the same time. He charges US$15 to US$25 depending on the size and complexity of the desired tattoo.
“As much as some days are glorious, I might go for a week with no single customer” he added.
The artist started tattoo work with the homemade or prison style tattoo gun which he says is rather more painful but still creates great tattoos. As the business peaked, he then began using a professional tattoo gun or machine. Ngazimbi said he learnt how to make a homemade tattoo gun from two artists he met in high school. “It’s quite easy to make the tattoo gun, one needs a spoon, a DVD motor, a pen barrel, a phone charger or batteries for power supply,” he said.
He added that most tattoo artists started with homemade tattoo machines as well as home-made inks. He explained that the home-made ink was made from burnt tires, soap and water. “We all start elsewhere but I’m now using a professional one-cylinder tattoo gun and Indian tattoo ink which consists of red and black ink,” he said.
The artist noted that tattooing as a profession has helped him gain more experience in drawing tattoos as the process is different from art on paper. He added that one has to understand certain procedures to be followed such as knowledge on the degree at which to run the needle for shading and creating solid lines for a neat image that looks as though on paper but engraved on the skin. Ngazimbi said he faces many challenges as the tattoo industry is not quite appreciated in Zimbabwe.
“Ink is expensive depending on the type and so are the machines. Family and friends desiring free tattoos is a challenge as the equipment is costly and you can’t really turn them away,” he said.
The tattoo artist added that despite a tattoo being free or paid for, he draws great tattoos as it is a way of marketing his business and to get his name out in the industry. He lamented the lack of appreciation in most Zimbabweans saying they do not see the point of paying much for a tattoo let alone do it and yet tattoos were expensive.
“Tattoos are costly depending on the size, time consumed and are tiring as the artist needs to focus and perfect the art hence, it should be valued,” he said.
Bongani Ndlovu