The Swedish artist, Linnéa Sjöberg has been turning DIY tattoos into performance art after a year of travelling around Europe taking photographs of herself and her friends tattooing themselves. The year long project has now culminated in a book called Salong Flyttkartong with the message ‘Act Before Thinking’ where she wants to cultivate irrational chaotic thinking, “that’s the energy in the project, kind of counter-productive. It’s two opposites: act before thinking but it’s going to stay with you for the rest of your life. People need to take a stand point: some people are like, “Yeah, go ahead,” and some back off and don’t want to hear about it, they are so frightened of this idea.”
A somewhat controversial subject and now what some may seem as ‘trendy’ are homemade tattoos but Linnéa delves into the psychology of tattooing yourself and why taking control of your own body is the most powerful tool we have. One of her most powerful tattoos was of the markings a plastic surgeon made on her breasts before having a boob job, “I booked a time at a plastic surgery clinic in Manhattan and asked the doctor to draw the lines that he would follow during a breast enlargement. With those lines I went home and tattooed them in front of the mirror, by myself.”
Linnéa’s book Salong Flyttkartong can be purchased here and she is also exhibiting at the Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm. More information about her work can be found on her website
