Spatialities, corporealities and education: the practice of tattooing in focus

• Grant number: 24/03929-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Valeria Cazetta
• Grantee: Valeria Cazetta
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Régia Cristina Oliveira

Abstract

Who hasn't come across a myriad of tattooed bodies on city streets and in tattoo studios? This project aims to investigate the interrelations between the practice of tattooing and the spatiality of tattoo studios in the city of São Paulo. To this end, I will mobilize five institutions, three public and two private, at three scalar levels, to understand how the proliferation of tattoo studios has occurred in the city of São Paulo: the Health Surveillance Coordination Office (COVISA), linked to the São Paulo State Health Department, which made it compulsory to register companies and self-employed professionals who carry out tattooing activities in the city of São Paulo (São Paulo, 2010); the São Paulo State Tattooists and Body Piercers Union (STPS); the Board of Trade of the State of São Paulo (JUCESP) - a state body whose responsibility is to register and give validity to all activity related to companies and corporations through the registered articles of association; the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service of the municipality of São Paulo (SEBRAE/SP), a private entity whose purpose is to provide assistance to small businesses, such as tattoo studios; and, finally, the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment by making it eligible, as of 2016) for tattoo artists to declare income tax annually. The analysis, by focusing on the educational effect of the materiality of tattoo studios in the city of São Paulo, seeks to understand the practice of tattooing as a device that connects geographical space and corporealities, highlighting the functioning of a practice that goes beyond inks, tips and tattoo machines, by rubbing geographical boundaries through the pedagogization of bodies. (AU)