Deus Ex Machina Tattoo

For my Final Course Project in Visual Arts university, I created four pieces of artwork that relate the human figure to cyborgs, inspired by films such as MATRIX, TERMINATOR, and ROBOCOP. Each piece represents a stage of my creative process: inspiration, sketchbook, development, and digital finishing. They were designed to be tattooed on different parts of the body, and professional stencils were produced for each piece, ensuring biosafety measures during the tattooing process. These pieces were later tattooed on people and will be displayed at the vernissage.

One of the pieces, named "Deus Ex Machina," was inspired by sketches from my sketchbook and digital collages. The artwork represents a machine giving birth to a human being, and I used concepts from movies like MATRIX and creatures from the game Horizon Zero Dawn as references. My goal was to create a divine anthropomorphic figure within a cybernetic aesthetic, inspired by a digital painting that I had used as a wallpaper for years. After manipulating the collected images in digital drawing software, the artwork took a different direction than the initial concept, and I transformed it into a female figure inspired by the Hindu deities, gestating a human baby while holding two swords for protection.

I chose actress Ana Vicente to be the person carrying this tattoo, as she showed interest in my work during a gathering with friends. The artwork's concept resonated with her, as motherhood provided a solution to conflicts in her life, and the tattoo embraced a meaningful significance beyond materiality. The photos included depict the tattoo during the first session and several days after the healing process.