Interview with Mohammad Ghazavi

I’m from Tehran, Iran. I studied architectural engineering, but I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t want to work in that field. After that, I became a graphic designer, which still meant working in an office, but it felt much closer to what I naturally wanted to do.

Tattooing started as a side job. It was in the summer of 2017. One of my friends was getting tattooed, and I started asking the artist how someone gets into it. That planted the idea in my head.

I’ve also never been very good with authority. The idea that I could tattoo independently, travel, and potentially work anywhere was very appealing. You don’t even necessarily need to speak the same language as somebody. The artwork can communicate.

I would mostly consider myself self-taught. I spent about two months with an artist who was the first person to put a tattoo machine in my hand. He showed me some basics, especially pulling lines, but it was a short experience and I later had to relearn some of what I had learned there.

After that, I learned by watching other artists, asking questions and making mistakes. A lot of the people I tattooed early on were friends, so I could see how the work healed and understand what I needed to improve.

For the first two or three years, I tattooed almost everything. Eventually I started figuring out what I was actually interested in and bringing my graphic design background into the work.

Tattooing in Iran was also very different from working here. You didn’t have tattoo shops openly operating on the street in the same way. One room in my apartment became my studio, and for a while I was even tattooing mobile. I kept my equipment in my car and travelled around to clients.

There was much more stigma, especially within more traditional families. Getting tattooed could create a lot of conflict, and you didn’t see nearly as many visibly tattooed people.

A lot of that stigma was historically connected to crime and prison culture. Twenty or 30 years ago, tattoos were much more strongly associated with people who had been incarcerated or involved in underground environments.

Iran also has its own prison tattoo tradition. I’ve covered some of those tattoos for friends and clients, so I’ve seen them directly. They were often made with improvised tools and materials, and there were recurring images, like a heart with the word “mother” written inside in Farsi, or certain portrait-style faces.

By the time I started tattooing, Instagram and the internet were already changing that perception by exposing people to modern tattooing from around the world.

I left Iran around five years ago and haven’t been back, so now I only see what’s happening through friends, artists and the internet. But tattoos definitely seem much more visible than when I left.

Toronto is completely different. You can have an office job and visible tattoos and most people don’t really care.

It started very directly from my heritage. I was looking at Persian and Middle Eastern motifs and thinking about how much potential they had in tattooing. At the time, I didn’t see many artists exploring those patterns in the way I imagined.

I would look at things like Indian mehndi and see how naturally people responded to ornamental work. I thought there was room for a Persian and Middle Eastern visual language within that side of tattooing too.

At first, I took fairly direct inspiration from traditional patterns because I wanted to see them exist as tattoos.

They’re not exclusively Iranian. You see related forms throughout the Middle East. But my connection to them comes through Persian culture, through rugs, architecture, decorative patterns and the ornamentation you see in mosques.

After working with them for several years and doing larger pieces, I started pushing the style in other directions.

That was one of the first major problems I had to solve. A lot of Persian ornamentation traditionally appears on rugs and fabrics, as well as in architecture. The body is three-dimensional. It curves and moves.

You can make something beautiful on a computer screen, but you can’t simply paste it onto somebody and expect it to work.

I started developing ways to map the body first. I could place paper around the area, mark the important shapes and anatomical landmarks, then remove it and essentially have a map of that body part. That helped me translate a flat design into something that actually worked with the person’s anatomy.

My architecture and graphic design backgrounds definitely influenced that way of thinking. But tattooing forced me to understand structure and proportion differently. The design has to belong to that particular body.

I still love ornamental work, but eventually I became very interested in abstract tattooing because it was almost the opposite. With ornamentation, every line has to be precise. One mistake can disturb the entire pattern. With abstract work, there is no absolute perfection. That was very freeing for me.

My inspiration became much broader too. I can look at tree bark, plants, clouds, textures or cracks in asphalt and find something interesting in the movement. I try to find a middle ground between that freedom and the structure I developed through ornamental work.

There’s also another direction that comes heavily from my graphic design background. I create those pieces on the computer using systems, numbers and algorithmic processes. I call that work kinetic because it interacts with the movement and anatomy of the body.

Those pieces can require several consultations, body mapping and a lot of measuring, so I only take them on when somebody is really committed to the process.

It depends on the project. For larger pieces, I prefer an in-person consultation. I want to sit with the person, talk to them and understand the body I’m designing for. I’ll usually photograph the placement and build the design around it. For ornamental work, I can design digitally over those photographs.

Abstract work can be completely different. Sometimes I need the client physically in front of me and I freehand directly onto their body. I don’t want to copy the flow of something that was designed for somebody else. It has to come from that individual body.

The kinetic pieces are more technical and involve measuring, mapping muscles, testing sections on the body and adjusting everything on the computer.

Almost everything I do is placement-specific. I also usually show clients the design before the appointment. I know many artists don’t, and they have valid reasons because it can create more revisions and more work. But personally, I want people to see what they’re potentially going to carry for the rest of their life.

If someone is unsure about placement, sometimes I’ll put the stencil on and let them spend some time with it before making the final decision. It creates more work, but I feel a responsibility to give people that space.

That’s one of the things I find most beautiful about tattooing. If I make a painting on paper, it belongs to me. I can keep it, give it away, tear it apart or burn it.

Tattooing is different because the artwork never really belongs to the artist. It exists inside somebody else’s skin. There’s a brief period while you’re creating it and transferring it onto the body when you have it. Then you finish and have to say goodbye. No matter how beautiful it is or how much you love it, it isn’t yours anymore.

That’s why I don’t become too attached to finished tattoos. Sometimes I’ll see an old photo and think, “Oh yeah, I did that.” Once the last session is finished, it becomes part of somebody else’s life.

My brother is different because I tattooed him a lot. He was basically my first canvas, so I still get to see those pieces. But even then, they aren’t mine. It’s his body. I was just a vessel helping transfer something onto his skin.

Definitely. Sometimes somebody comes to me with a lot of ideas, and as an artist my first instinct might be to simplify something or move in another direction. But I have to remind myself that they are the person carrying it.

If a client asks for a change, I’ll usually make it unless I have a real reason not to. If I think the change will hurt the composition or create a technical problem, I’ll explain why. But if I don’t have a legitimate reason to say no, then I think, this is your tattoo.

The same thing applies to trust. When somebody lies on that bed, they’re vulnerable. They’re allowing you to hurt their body for hours and permanently change it.

I don’t think I understood the weight of that trust as much when I started. Now when a client says, “Thank you,” I usually say, “Thank you for trusting me.” I appreciate that more every year.

I wish people saw the other side of the iceberg... Getting to the studio at noon doesn’t mean I started working at noon. At home I’m designing, thinking about projects, answering messages, managing bookings, making flash, filming and editing. Sometimes it feels like two or three jobs happening at once.

A simple tattoo might take me 20 minutes to prepare. But the reason I can make something tattoo-ready in 20 minutes is because I spent almost 10 years learning how to do that. Another project might take weeks to design.

Creativity also depends on your mental state. There have been times when serious things were happening in Iran and I had to reschedule clients because I couldn’t think clearly enough to design their tattoo. If I’m creatively blocked, I have nothing to give them.

There’s a physical side too. You can spend six hours in almost the same position, using the same muscles over and over. So my most practical advice to younger tattoo artists is very simple: keep your back straight. I’m serious.

I appreciate conventions because they gave me exposure and connected me with other artists. But the competition side has always felt strange to me. Tattooing isn’t a sport.

There are absolutely things you can judge objectively. You can look at line work, how somebody treated the skin, how the tattoo heals and whether the artist has the technical ability to execute the work properly.

I think tattoo artists are technicians before they become artists. You need to understand the machine, the skin and the technical side first.

But once you get into artistic expression, it becomes subjective. You can put two paintings on a wall and ask which one is better, but at some point you’re talking about personal taste. Tattooing has both sides.

I used to be much more judgmental about certain styles. I would look at something and think, technically this isn’t difficult, so why are people doing it?

I don’t think like that anymore.

After seeing so many people with different tattoos, I realized every tattoo has a story. Sometimes it’s deeply personal. Sometimes the story is that somebody got drunk and made a bad decision. That’s still a story.

People also seem less obsessed with asking, “What does your tattoo mean?” than they used to be. Now a tattoo can simply look beautiful on somebody’s body. I’m completely fine with that.

Honestly, I don’t think there is such a thing as a tattoo with no meaning. You decided to put something underneath your skin. You sat there and went through that experience. That already means something.

Art does, but tattooing is complicated.

Like I said earlier, a client’s tattoo isn’t mine. If I’m sad or angry about something happening in my country, I can’t automatically transfer that pain into somebody else’s body. They came to me for something they’re going to carry.

Sometimes I need to go home, cry, process what I’m feeling and clear my mind before I can create for somebody else.

Other forms of art give you more freedom to express those emotions directly. I’ve seen Iranian artists create paintings, photography and installations in response to what’s happening there. Pain can become fuel for art.

Tattooing just has another layer because another person has to carry the result.

Absolutely. I’ve experienced that myself. When I’ve gone through very difficult periods, I’ve tattooed myself. Most of the tattoos you see on me, I did myself, although some were later covered with blackout work by somebody else.

I started noticing a connection between what was happening physically and what I was going through emotionally. You create a controlled wound in the skin. Then the skin starts healing, and eventually that wound becomes a mark that you chose.

I feel like emotional pain can work in a similar way. The wound heals, but the mark stays. The experience stays. The lessons stay. I think tattoos can do something powerful for people in that way. You can mark an experience on your body and watch yourself heal around it.

Community is important because tattoo artists understand each other. Nothing helped me more in my own journey than other artists. I learned by asking questions and watching people work. Now, if somebody asks me something and I know the answer, I try to share my experience too.

That’s one reason artists can progress much faster today. They don’t have to spend years repeating every mistake the generation before them already made.

I’m currently working at Tattoo People Toronto, where I’ve been for around two years. It’s a respectful environment, and I’ve enjoyed being around artists from backgrounds different from my own.

I’ve also seen people organizing potlucks, parties and other tattoo community gatherings around Toronto, and I’d like to be more involved with that.

At the end of the day, friends, family and community are probably the most important things in my life.

And tattoo artists are cool people. Except me. Everybody else is cool.