Samoan Tatau History

Tahiti and Samoan Tatau, Marquesan Tatu "puncture, marking on the skin"). Tattoos, tattoos, tribal tattoos, designs | Polynesian Cultural Center.

Tatau: Samoan Tattoo Cultural History: 2018 by Sean Mallon

Tatau: Cultural History of Samoan tattooing is the first book to investigate 3000 years of Samoan Tatau. In a chronicle full of human beings, meetings and happenings, she explains how Samoan tattoos have been influenced by internal and international factors of transformation over many hundred years. Samoan Islands are practically unparalleled because tattoos are continually practiced using native techniques: the complete masculine Tattoos, the Pe'a, has developed subtly in its designs since the 19th cent. but remain as complex, significant and strong as it ever was.

It is the first book to investigate 3000 years of the Samoan Tatau. In a chronicle full of human beings, meetings and happenings, she explains how Samoan tattoos have been influenced by internal and international factors of transformation over many hundred years. It' lavishly illustrates with historic pictures of the 19th and 20th Samoan tattoos, modern tattoos, diagrams of tattoos and motives, and with additional photos such as backgrounds, ephemeras, filmtilles, and artifacts.

He is of Samoan and Irish origin and is Senior Curator Pacific Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Writer of Samoan Arts and artists (2002) and co-editor of Pacific Niu Sila: Pacific Dimensions of New Zealand Modernism ("Tatau", 2002): The Samoan Tattoos, New Zealand Artwork, New Zealand International Cultural Heritage (2010) and Tangata o le Moana: the history of New Zealand and the Pacific (2012).

He concentrates his research on the Samoan tattoo tradition and the modern practices of this ancient monsty. He has visited Samoa, Tonga and Fiji several times since 2001 to conduct research in the area.

Samoan ink that leaves indestructible traces, voices: While in Samoa for one year in 2005, he took several hundred lessons of photography and films and exhibited some of these photos in France (Marseille, Correns). Lectured on tattoo in Te Papa and at various meetings in Samoa and Europe.