My body, my art

Concealment - the obscuring of physical features - is a key feature of many forms of body art, not just that to do with genitals. It is obvious in certain forms of clothing, such as a Catholic nun’s habit, Muslim dress, and bathing costumes from Victorian England.

Masks are a striking form of body art that conceal the face and also transform personal identity. Often they are combined with costume to portray the identity of an ancestor, a mythological being, or a hero.

The new identity is acted out in ritual performance, with many people believing the beings represented are actually present. The actors themselves take on the power of the beings they portray, and in the process can reach a higher state of awareness, being, self-expression, and self-confidence.

Masks are a form of body art which act out transformation, replacing one identity with another and expressing categorical change. They occur in connection with rites of passage and curative ceremonies such as exorcisms, and are frequently associated with funerary rites and death. But they also can be about life, renewed life, and rebirth.

Sometimes we apply a cosmetic or mud face-mask to renew and rejuvenate our face. In the process, we attempt to accentuate and bring our facial features alive to attract sexual partners. Or we don a mask along with a new persona for a fancy dress ball, a Halloween dance, a Mardi Gras performance, or during war - to play, act, or pass on to another state of being.

Wigs, hair, hats and head dresses are also meant to transform and bring attention to our faces and heads. They signal status, hierarchy, initiation, sexual orientation, competence and competition.

Compare the primarily male hats and head dresses worn by members of the Catholic Church - from the Pope to cardinals, bishops and priests - to the female headgear displayed annually at that great Australian festival, the Melbourne Cup. Then think of wigs worn by judges, barristers, lawyers, prostitutes, drag queens and harlots. Think of hippy hair, Rasta hair, pink hair, Mohawks, lime-green hair, and red and blue hair.

Australian Aboriginal males in Arnhem Land and the Kimberley wore enormous and elaborate head dresses over 10,000 years ago, if rock painting depictions are an indication. Early explorers and anthropologists with stereotypical pith helmets would have loved to have encountered them in the flesh.

Bowler hats, Aussie akubras, baseball caps worn backwards, sombreros, yarmulkes, Sunday hats, scarves, Carmen Miranda’s head of fruit, widow’s caps, crowns, tiaras, military hats and helmets, bridal veils, towering Pacific island head dresses, and Indian turbans are just a few of the many forms of head adornment expressing cultural affiliation, status, religious belief, state of being, and personal identity. They draw attention directly to or above the face, forcing the viewer to make contact and signal the nature of interaction that should take place.

A concern for personal identity, and portraying such through body art, begins at an early age. As infants begin to explore their new world with hands and eyes, they soon learn to recognise parents, siblings and friends. They learn the identities of other people partly through the ways these people adorn themselves, and are taught to follow similar practices.

If they are girls in southern Europe, they might have their ears pierced at a very early age; if they are boys in Israel or the USA, they might have their penises circumcised. They are dressed, painted and otherwise adorned.

In some parts of the world they might receive their first tattoo before the age of one. Today, in many countries, their faces are painted for ceremony, fun and profit. Eventually they might acquire lip plugs, neck bands, ear spools, nose rings, anklets, navel jewellery, or bones through the nose.

Some children quickly express streaks of independence, wanting to choose clothes or change the appearance of their hair before the age of two. Others patiently sit back, watching and learning the norms of their family, society and cultural group until one day they will imitate them.

But whichever the case, children quickly learn the “proper” codes of dress and adornment. Whether they consistently follow these rules is another matter, with teenagers everywhere often rebelling or protesting adult ways by purposely adorning themselves against common practice.

In Western society this has become so prevalent that whole subcultures have arisen with their own rules and modes of body art and practice. The consequence is that today, in modern day Australia, America or Europe, to get a tattoo or piercing might more be an expression of conforming rather than rebelling.

Interestingly, in recent years there has been a movement toward indigenous tattoo designs among Western youth, and a comparable inverse preference toward Western designs by the young of the Pacific Islands and other traditional tattoo-practicing nations.

Even some bikie gangs are changing from heavy metal and rose designs to elaborate displays of native Australian flowers, sometimes revealing glimpses of the Opera House or even the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Body shaping is another area that has undergone a transformation in recent times. Head binding, neck stretching, foot binding, and corsets were once all the rage in some cultures. Tooth filing, finger amputation, lip stretching and ear elongation were also practised in a variety of ceremonial and cultural contexts. Then came facelifts, nose jobs, tooth rearrangement by specialists called “orthodontists”, and breast implants.

Today, changes to the shape of one’s body are limited only by money and imagination. Liposuction - the vacuuming of fat from under the skin - is increasingly being used to lose weight quickly, to shape and sculpt a “new you”

Nips and tucks can be performed almost anywhere one desires; the length or width of the penis can be increased; and almost any blemish considered unsightly can be removed.

Plastic surgery is not just for accident victims but more often is a tool for body art. However, this form of body art can be particularly painful, expensive and time-consuming; a sacrifice that many feel is worth making because of the resulting perceived attractiveness, self-confidence and self-esteem.

For many people, the more time, dedication, pain and toil put into their adornment, the more they feel empowered. In group settings, this is often associated with some form of initiation, and initiation always involves sacrifice and confrontation.

For individuals, the pain and endurance of some forms of body art mimic those of group initiation, giving highs worth repeating. For others, their body is a life’s work, a piece of performance art that is continually being refined and added to.

In extremes, this leads to every part of the body tattooed, from head to foot. Or it may lead to an eclectic composition of ink, steel, scar tissue, animal products, clothing and precious stones set on a sculpted human form that continually changes with the application of paints, dyes and hair-pieces.

For many people, their body is their art, as well as an expression of a history of personal and group experience. And everyone practises some form of body art.

We might have rings or other forms of jewellery that symbolise graduation, engagement, marriage, a birthday or a personal milestone. We cut and shape our hair in ways that reflect both personal and cultural tastes, styles and practices. Some of us grow facial hair into elaborate, intricate or outrageously ragged patterns.

We clothe ourselves in all manner of material, substance, and colour. We mark our skin with temporary or long-lasting designs - scarred, burnt, tattooed, dusted and painted on very intimate and very publicly accessible parts of the body.

We have elaborate traditions that celebrate status, rites of passage, religious beliefs, and cultural histories. Some of us change our shapes through a variety of time-consuming and, often, painful practices.

Some of us eat to look fat; others diet to look thin. We may hold different ideas of what constitutes “beauty” but we share an ideal that “beauty” exists, both for ourselves and for others. This is one of the things being human is all about.

But what of the future? What new, bold, shocking and stunningly beautiful body art can we expect over the next millennium?

Perhaps body modification will be taken to new heights with interchangeable faces, complete scalp and hair transplants, wrinkle-proof hands, and even the addition of animal body parts becoming common.

Certainly, new forms of marking and modifying the skin will be invented, such as permanent changes to skin colour, implants that project outward into a myriad of fashionable forms, and new types of tattooing such as 3D designs or changing or shifting patterns triggered by variable lighting.

Perhaps even the cyborg machine-body fusions of science-fiction films will soon be possible. One day we may be able to genetically engineer interchangeable body parts, changing shapes, heights, colours and textures for different occasions.

Only time and human imagination will tell, but it is predicted variation will increase rather than decrease as people search for new ways to express themselves in an ever-changing, technologically-driven world.

Our bodies will remain deeply personal - perhaps they will also remain the one aspect of our lives over which we will have some measure of control.