Anthropomorphic tigers hold on to sacred flames and ancient gods flex their mythical weapons. In Bangalore-based tattoo artist Karthik Bengre's designs, surreal characters from India's age-old mythological traditions come alive on people's skin.
Originally from Bengre, a small fishing island near Mangalore, Karthik grew up watching the ornamental patterns and embellishments on the village temples and the painted body art on performers during festive celebrations in the community. He had always been interested in drawing and painting, but it was only after moving to Bangalore for work that he became interested in the art of tattooing.
"I had a friend who was tattooing, and I weaved myself into that circle because I saw it as a medium to make art."Karthik Bengre, tattooist
During this time, Karthik also began travelling extensively across India, photographing and documenting peoples and patterns he came across during his trips. Soon, these designs began appearing in his drawings and tattoo designs.
Today, he runs the Sculp Tattoo Studio in Bangalore. His signature designs draw from the patterns and motifs he documented during his extensive travels, as well as from Karnataka's ancient leather puppetry tradition.
"The tattooing culture is absorbed in commercial and western art," Karthik says. "I wanted to shift from this."
During the lockdown, he grabbed a few books of rangoli and began studying the methods of the Indian domestic art form. He began recreating rangoli patterns and motifs — an exercise which allowed him to use tattoos as an instrument of contemporising the visual grammar of traditional Indian folk art forms. Lately, he has been working with Karnataka's togalu gombeyaata leather puppeteers to conserve and sustain the tradition through his tattoos. Karthik works closely with artisan communities to engage with their work and learn from them.
"Asian countries like Japan and China have found ways to adapt their folk art forms as amazing large-scale works on skin," Karthik says. "Similarly, I want to use tattoos as a canvas for the visual representation of Karnataka's leather puppetry in the form of large-scale body art. Its graphic depictions of gods and demons and complex interplay of scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata are a treasure trove of fresh ideas."
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