archives of ink and flesh

on tattoos as archival objects

Photo by C M on Unsplash

I got my first tattoo in September 2021, at a small shop in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The design is simple—a plain black outline of the Hindu-Urdu word आज़ादी (azadi), meaning “freedom,” in the handwriting of one of my closest friends from university. The tattoo is about an inch tall and two and a half in…