OKLAHOMA CITY — Darkish parlors, loud music and buzzing needles could come to thoughts once you suppose “tattooing,” however The Cowboy’s latest exhibition pushes previous the tattooing stereotype to focus on the long-standing traditions of tattooing in North America.
Tattoos: Faith, Actuality and Remorse, opening Friday at The Nationwide Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma Metropolis, explores the cultural traditions of tattooing in Native American cultures and tattooing traditions which can be practiced globally right this moment.
“Tattooing is a type of expression usually undervalued in historic analysis,” stated Eric Singleton, Nationwide Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Curator of Ethnology. “Tattoos had been used to specific tribal affiliation and struggle honors, connections to divine beings, maturity rites, and social or non secular affiliation so significant to some cultures that they may stick with it with an individual into the afterlife.”
Now part of fashionable, main-stream tradition, this exhibition goals to focus on the historical past, legacy and traditions of Native American tattooing and the trendy meanings and customs of tattooing via gadgets and pictures from the Museum’s everlasting collections and the Dickinson Analysis Heart.
“Our mission is to discover the evolving historical past of the American West and this exhibition cuts to the core of that concept,” stated Natalie Shirley, Museum President & CEO. “The West is greater than only a saddle or a narrative a few cowboy, it’s many issues to many individuals and on this exhibition, we get to discover what tattooing means to our shared historical past.”
