Having a tattoo has not always been socially accepted. There was a time when they were associated with certain professions, such as sailors, or with marginal figures, such as convicts or prostitutes. "Now, on the other hand, it is strange that he does not have some drawing on his skin," reflects Nadal Suau (Palma, 1980), who won the Anagrama Essay award this Tuesday with Curar la skin.
As if it were a declaration of intentions, the writer, professor and critic collected the award at the Condes hotel in Barcelona dressed in a shirt that revealed some of the tattoos that have accompanied him for years. “I started at a relatively late age, somewhere in my thirties, because I was looking for a physical seal that would complete a process of vital change. That coincided with becoming friends with a tattoo artist who made me understand tattoo culture from a perspective that we do not always have access to and that not only related it to durability but also to loyalty.”
Suau confessed at a press conference that six years ago it occurred to him to put down on paper some of the doubts that arose in him since he decided to ink himself for the first time: “Why did I need a brand like this and why do I repeat myself? Why are the first three tattoos designed to the millimeter and the rest not? And on a more collective level, what has happened in the last 20-30 years for it to become popular and become something normal?
In order to answer all these questions, the author has structured his work "based on five tattoos that I have on my own skin and that allowed me to analyze all of it." Although, he advances, “the answers are not unilateral because there are as many reasons as there are biographies or ways of understanding identity.”
There are 21 tattoos that Suau has on his body and he does not rule out adding one more to mark the award, "but it will not be the Anagrama logo," he says smiling. The first of all was a beetle that Pere Joan designed for him. “He is outstanding, but the result was not what was expected, although on paper it was great. But I am not in favor of deleting it. I would never do it. I understand that a bad result is part of the story.”
