"They want to forget about it": I make a tattoo for victims of domestic violence
Tattoo master from Ufa Zhenya Zakhar makes free tattooswomen survivors of domestic violence. She has been doing this for two years now, having borrowed the idea from her Brazilian colleague Flavia Carvalho, who in 2013 came up with her project “A Pele da Flor”. Zhenya is now preparing for a large-scale motor race in the cities of Russia - a charity event, which for many of her clients is becoming a kind of therapy and an act of overcoming traumatic experience.
A post about Flavia Carvalho and what she was doing was sent to me by a client: "Oh, look, cool." At first I did not pay attention to him - I remembered only after two months and thought: why not do this in Russia? By that moment I already had a studio, and people with scars came to me. Then I didn’t ask them where their scars came from - just covered them, that's all.
In the very first week after I announced the project, I started to write girls - not only from Bashkiria, but also from all over Russia - and ask how to get to me. I do not know how they found out about me and why the information was so quickly distributed over the web. But there were a lot of letters. They asked: "What, really free?" There was a negative, someone said that I just want to promote and earn money.
The motor race in Russia, which we planned for August, had to be postponed until September, because we do not have enough money for it. About twenty cities, from Ufa to Veliky Novgorod - I did not measure the distance, but it turns out about six thousand kilometers.
The most common scars are the scars on the hands (from self-harmony or suicide attempts) or the scars after an operation to remove the appendix. Scars from domestic violence - from cut, stabbed wounds - can always be distinguished by eye. In two years I began to understand them and often I can even say with what knife or shot from what gun the wound was inflicted.
Stories of scars are always told - but only one on one. Now they talk a lot about it, try to draw attention to the problem. And rightly so, but many girls treat such frankness badly. For them, this is something personal, they want to forget about it. If the crew comes, the girls immediately close. Face to face - they tell, but as if they do it the first and last time.
Most have no idea how to score a scar, they just want to close it. As a rule, I select several options: it is necessary not only to cover the scar with a picture - it is important to choose a texture so that the picture lays on the scar and hides it. Basically it is something delicate: flowers, butterflies. The idea of flowers came from Flavia: her project was called "A Pele da Flor" ("Skin like a flower"), and the flowers in their texture are just suitable for covering their scars - you can even say that scars are suitable for a flower tattoo .
On average, a tattoo takes two hours. There are no special medical contraindications, but we do not tattoo on scars that are less than a year old. On fresh scars, it makes no sense to make a picture: there the skin and the scar are still formed and the paint may not enter and close the scar. The remaining restrictions are standard: nursing mothers, as well as people with skin diseases or problems with blood clotting do not need a tattoo.
You can remove the scar, but it is an expensive procedure. Many of the girls who came to me said something like: "I am totally against tattoos. I just want to close the scar." At the same time, none of them said afterwards: "Zhenya, I don’t like what happened, I’d rather have a scar." I communicate with almost all the girls who have tattooed me, and they all said that their life has changed: as soon as they stop seeing the scar, it becomes easier for them. Standing in front of the mirror, they no longer think that there is something wrong with them, that they are ugly. It doesn't seem to them that the scar made them a monster. And the idea of themselves and their beauty can be spoiled even by a small scar. A person can close, avoid communicating with a partner. I saw people simply flourish after covering the scar with a tattoo, they became completely different.
Photo: Zhenya Zakhar / Vkontakte