Grimes is the queen of post-human aesthetics, from her experiments in bio-hacking to her (as yet unrealised) plans to get matching brain chips with Lil Uzi Vert. Her futuristic beauty looks have inspired a whole generation of terminally online alt-girls and emo faeries, who fuse tech and fantasy elements of their quest to higher resemble video-game characters. 

Earlier this yr, the Canadian auteur took the subsequent step in her “long slow effort to have a full alien body” with a second white ink tattoo. The primary, a sprawling backpiece from 2021, was a collaboration between tattoo artist Tweakt and artist Nusi Quero. Described as “beautiful alien scars”, each tattoos resemble tribal tattoos from a martian technocracy; their white lines giving the looks of intricately patterned scars.

Grimes’ tattoos speak to a wider trend taking up social media – what I seek advice from as post-human or nu-tribal. These skeletal tattoos are fine-lined and greyscale, looking like cyborgian veins by the use of Y2K tribal tatts and HR Giger. Sprawling and shadowy, they snake down the body in fluid lines that appear as in the event that they’ve been drawn freehand (which they generally are). The artists, though not geographically close to 1 one other, are a part of the identical online communities of tattoo artists drawing on imagery of fantasy, sci-fi, and nature to create otherworldly creations.

“The tribal images that feature in so-called post-humanist tattoos are variations of the older traditional tribal genre which have evolved and adjusted to suit the contemporary era,” says South Korean tattoo artist GyeHoo Bolsu. “During Y2K in Korea, ridiculously radical and futuristic fashion and apocalyptic interior designs were in trend. Plainly the present generation has accepted the crude trends of the era in a positive way. While people’s interests in traditional elements proceed to wane today, Y2K trends are reinterpreted from the present era’s perspective and endlessly reproduced,” they explain.

Anna Orm, a Ukrainian tattoo artist, describes her tattoos as “skin patterns” and “alien letters” which are inspired by the natural curves of the human body. “I like how tattoos can turn out to be a component of the body visually: somewhere it appears just a little brighter, somewhere just a little darker, disappears in some places and fades away,” she says. “I feel [tribal tattoos] became more relevant lately resulting from the incontrovertible fact that tattoos are more accepted by the younger generations as an adjunct. Such tattoos look fresh, and sometimes unexpected on the body. The post-human style is, to some extent, the transformation of the identical sharp, winding organic shapes that capture the rhythm of contemporary life and the mood of the time.”

After years of pandemic, the increased popularity of nu-tribal tattoos suggests a must escape the true world through fantastical insertions. “Individuals are bored. With themselves, with the world, with all the pieces and anything,” says tattoo artist Super Dope Tattoo. “I suppose there’s been the next demand recently, because all the pieces is being manufactured so perfectly, persons are searching for something unique.” We see this mirrored in our fashion, as young people experiment with internet-born fashion trends influenced by videogames and a penchant for escapism. Whether it’s fairycore or goblincore, mod-evil chain metal or the RAWRing 20s, the need to flee from our skin prisons, into daring and unfamiliar territories, can’t be ignored. Daniel, a Denver-based tattoo artist often known as Sinkhole, agrees: “It’s almost like IRL character customisation.”

“It is smart to me that individuals are returning to techno-futurist fantasies to deal with collective doom. I feel persons are turning an increasing number of to fantasy to deal with climate anxiety. It’s easy to feel helpless within the face of environmental collapse – and this helplessness carries a lack of bodily autonomy,” he adds. “Getting an enormous set of wings tattooed in your back won’t make you capable of fly, but projecting fantasy on your personal body has numerous potential for reclaiming agency.”

A serious part of the present Y2K trend is irony. Past trends are rehashed and recontextualised for a recent audience. Diamantes and Juicy Couture tracksuits turn out to be ways of questioning mainstream narratives by bringing to the fore opposing (and subsequently subversive) narratives, which in turn, get recontextualised as ‘edgy’ – and the cycle continues. What we consider as gauche today can turn out to be tomorrow’s hottest trends. “Irony allowed us to proceed life under late capitalism while psychologically sheltering ourselves from the demoralising reality,” writes artist and cultural researcher Joshua Citarella.

But Daniel warns, “I feel it’s necessary to be critical of the fashionable revival and reinterpretation of ‘tribal’ tattoos. It appears to be riding an odd line between irony and white people attempting to distance ourselves from our whiteness.”

While Grimes’ alien ink is reflective of a collective interest within the weird and extraterrestrial, trends will little question change as a latest generation of young people begin experimenting with tattoos. “An emerging trend of ASCII tattoos seems very post-human, transferring a sequence of numbers and characters generated by the pc onto the skin,” suggests Aleksandra, a London-based artist. Perhaps we’ll see cyborgian renditions of indie sleaze. Or, possibly our nostalgia towards early web aesthetics will spur on a wave of Microsoft Paint and Flash art-inspired works. Watch this space.