Middle Eastern / North African Tattoo Artists

ARYANA GOODARZI— I can attest that almost every queer person I know has at least one tattoo. It is still rare to find Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) tattoo artists in the states, and for a huge cultural moment to be generated by queer MENA people makes me proud – and its implications go far beyond tattoos. Born in the West and raised in the diaspora, these artists found themselves able to hold the at-onceness of their identities through ink.

As I write this, I can count 15 tattoos on myself, many of which have queer and MENA undertones. I have an overtly sapphic Georgia O’Keefe tattoo, a Botero painting of a man in a dress, and more. I’m currently saving up money to schedule my next tattoo appointment for my current fixation: a sketch of one of Pippa Garner’s art pieces.

The first time I got a tattoo, I was 20. I went to the nearest tattoo shop I could find that took walk ins. I’ve had heavily inked, tough-looking guys tattoo very queer pieces on me, as I’m sure many of us have. I didn’t chitchat with the tattoo artist, as he clearly didn’t seem to care to. After a few more experiences like that, I began to think that the tattoo artist was as important to me as the art itself. I know there are tattoo artists near me that have the artistic skill to give me the tattoo I want. However, I would rather just hold off on until I can get on a queer MENA tattoo artists’ books.

Several years ago, at the New York City Dyke March, amid thousands of people. I spotted someone who, by all indications, appeared to be queer. Then, judging by one of their tattoos, I realized they are also Iranian. That was the first time I saw the established traditional tattoo style colliding with MENA art. Though I yearned for it, I had never been tattooed by another queer MENA person, as I didn’t know any who were tattoo artists. I’ve often fantasized about how our culture could be embodied in traditional tattooing. I’m currently working with an artist on a lady head resting on a roaring black panther’s head as a back piece—a common tattoo flash in American traditional style—but with thick, connected eyebrows, and full, wavy black hair decorated with some ornaments in red ink.

In August 2023, I wanted a piece of art, by a queer Syrian named Yasmin Almokhamad-Sarkisian. If I went to a MENA tattoo artist, they told me, I wouldn’t have to pay them commission. When I put out a call for one, I was introduced to several queer MENA tattoo artists – in New York City, Montréal, and Mexico City.

This goes beyond tattoos; it’s about cultural reclamation. Historically, the experiences of queer and trans people, especially that of MENA diasporas, have been divided, kept apart by a culture that uses shame and repression, hugely influenced by Whiteness’ hold on both queerness and tattooing. There is a new generation queer MENA tattoo artists who are shifting the homogeneity of queer, MENA, and tattoo culture without permission from, or pleading with, Whiteness. These tattoo artists talk about a culture that is both necessary and beautiful for queer MENA people, and what it means to bring tattoos in.

Nassim (Sema) Dayoub, @seem.tattoo, is a trans Arab tattoo artist based in Brooklyn, New York. I spent an afternoon last March in conversation with them as they tattooed me. We spoke further about ink and identity. Tattoos have provided life-giving moments for me, where artists are not just creators but messengers. On the Nostrand A and G train over to Nassim’s tattoo shop, the reality of the upcoming tattoo and the conversation we would be having was beginning to settle. It was deep in my stomach, where it took root, and a mix of pre-tattoo nerves and excitement grew to my head.

Not every tattoo has to be overtly queer or of MENA influence. For many queer people, tattoos can be a form of gender affirming care. There’s sanitation, there’s some blood, and your body looks different after the process. The experience of agency that tattoos can provide can also help people get to a point to pursue other forms of gender affirmation. It’s a relatively affordable and accessible way to transition.

Alive with the buzzing tattoo machine and the needle’s cat- scratching sensation digging into my skin, Nassim told me about how as soon as they learned what top surgery was, they knew they wanted to get it: “I didn’t grow up with a lot of money and I didn’t have health insurance. I still don’t. I was like, ‘How am I going to [get top surgery]?’ I was saving up for years. While I was saving up, I was experiencing so much gender dysphoria that eventually I decided to just get my whole chest tattooed. My friend Karina did it. That kind of held off some of the gender dysphoria for a few years. Even after I got top surgery, when the bandages came off, I remember I thought, ‘Damn, even if I got top surgery years and years ago, when I first realized it was something I wanted…If I didn’t have tattoos, I would still feel dysphoric.’ The tattoos ground me in my body in a way that’s kind of separate from gender.”

After a break, as I laid back down on my stomach and Nassim dipped the tattoo pen in more red ink, we began talking about how their identity as a trans MENA person informs their relationship with tattooing. Scanning the walls of their tattoo shop for past stencils, they told me that their tattoo style is somewhat American traditional: “I love tattoos that look like tattoos. I like bold lines and bright colors – the technical aspects of a tattoo that make it last a really long time as someone ages. However, there’s a lot I can’t relate to at all. I like the design principles, and then subbing in gay shit. My queerness and Arabness is in imagery.”

I spoke to another tattoo artist, who is based in Montréal. Antar, @grungycorpsetattoo, is Coptic (North African Indigenous), nonbinary, and transmasculine, and has been tattooing for four years. Unable to fly out to them for this interview, I found my hands moving over each of my tattoos as we spoke, like they were a portal to Montréal. Collecting tattoos and the practice of tattooing is more than just art to Antar. 90% of the people they tattoo are queer and/or trans. I hope to be one of the next. They also started getting tattoos before they had access to medical gender affirming care, like testosterone. Unable to control how they were being perceived, Antar pursued tattoos as an alternative avenue of gender affirming care, and the agency it provided allowed them to assert themselves the way they wanted.

I have one of my favorite queer Iranian paintings from the Qajar era tattooed on the back of my upper arm. There was a lot of gender queerness during that time and in many paintings, you cannot tell who the “man” or “woman” is or if it even is a man or woman – perhaps it’s a queer couple. There is a Western hold on queerness that cannot fathom my Iranianness, and a lack of imagination of Iranian identity that made me think I wasn’t as Iranian because I’m queer. We are existing where others once did. There’s a tethering, a pull that the art that is these tattoos honor.

Sema started tattooing eight years ago. “At the time in Chicago, it was more underground tattooing. There were very few queer tattooers that I knew, and definitely no other queer Arab tattooers. That has changed so much in the past eight years, especially in New York – there are my coworkers Haitham, @_sukhmat, and Hassan, @scutttle.butt. It’s been the best thing, and it makes me excited to not be the only [queer Arab tattoo artist]. I’m sure I wasn’t ever the only one, but the only one I knew.”

Ultimately, tattoos and tattoo practices are not going to change the laws; there are at least 600 anti-queer and trans bills being considered across the country, LGBTQ+ people experience higher suicide and targeted homicide rates, and housing and employment discrimination, among many other things. Still, the practices of these queer MENA tattoo artists, and their relationship to tattoos, celebrates the at-onceness of our identities through ink, both archiving our existence and increasing our willfulness.