Images by No_One StudioWenzhelini. I think I’ve taken on a similar DIY aspect, mixed with experimentation and willingness to try different collaborations and styles, and have a reluctance to be pinned down.Ham’s upcoming 2020 exhibition, The Flesh that Dreams are made of, will explore how our imagination can affect the ways we see and treat our bodies.
Image by No One StudioI try to not be influenced by others so I can carve my own path, there might be inspirational aspects to others that get me thinking about my own trajectory. Image by No_One Studio.This underpins my event Wraith, which is a platform for myself, my friends and the alt scene in London. Needless to say none of them appealed to me, they were very much aimed at men and none of them featured tattoos that I like or would suit me and my tastes. You never know what you’re gonna get.”Parma Ham. It rips apart from emotions. We knew we wanted to do something with our bodies and focus on creating rituals. You don’t need to pick anything. Sure, it’s rewarding to have work in galleries, museums, and magazines and hit that mainstream audience, but I get more pleasure, conversation, inspiration and engagement when working with and for friends in our own context.London based tattooist Eli and Polish-born tattooist Adam Curly share their respective heavy blackwork journeys: “I’ll never be same again after this—tattooing solid black is a very spiritual thing, for me anyway. The Nullo project is a form of augmentation, the digital dream that has become reality; it’s a bit like having an avatar, but then altering and adorning our real time body to match it, because that too is an avatar as the digital and organic worlds merge.I like the sound of transgressor, and it is transgressors I like to keep company with. "I bought a load of tattoo magazines for inspiration. My own desire is to make things that push the boundaries of my own experience; and I make the assumption that the audience around me might appreciate the same things as me, so I share it. Many have traced the Western inception of this phenomenon to the iconoclastic spirit of one individual—Fakir Musafar, and the contributions he made to pioneering extreme body modification in the 1989 publication, The Modern Primitives: An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and ritual. I’m fortunate with social media that I’ve gained a large and more mainstream audience where I have exposure to people outside of my immediate context. This maxim is what guides me right now; I know what I need in the world, and if I can’t find something pre-existing I’m going to find a way to create it, so work, objects and events are born out of necessity.That stems from the realisation that the built world - society, morality, politics, art, gender etc is the product of white, straight, cis male dominated binary thinking. I love Gen however! They truly created their own universe, and there’s many sides of both their work and their life that inspires and pushes boundaries. Or has it already been done, but better?”, if the answer is yes, I disregard and move on. I’m not sure if it’s the healthiest way of going about things, and for many years I held myself back, because I thought there was no way I could create work as good as some of the great thinkers of our times.Your preorder cannot be refunded under any circumstance.I ask myself “will this benefit the world by me putting it out? It seems pretty straightforward to me that billionaires, politicians corrupt by money and the hate speech that enforces these status quo’s is the real evil, and it seems a lot of people don’t have the sense to tell apart what is actually a threat to society, and what offends their sensibilities that mean nothing in comparison.I was forced to create Wraith; I needed to present my work, and the work of my friends, and there was nowhere else that existed that could provide an appropriate context for it. The exhibition will be staged throughout 2020 in Wraith in London before travelling to the USA, and I love that it ties to music through its namesake whilst being held in nightclub. Image by No One StudioAs humans we are experts at altering our environments to suit our needs and desires, so it’s only fitting that the body is a blank slate open to customisation.