Ant the Elder is a ritual worker with a focus on tattoos, artefacts, and performance practices

Tattoo Practice: Skin Rituals

The ritual aspect of tattooing, mundane, casual or ceremonial is part of what makes this practice truly singular. It allows oneself to dictate their own rules and meanings attached to said event. Small or big, symbolic or ornamental, a tattoo brings elements of transformation, if only physical. Consensual tattooing can be pivotal in body re-appropriation, identity affirmation, psyche healing and so much more. Tattoos are powerful.

Ant the Elder’s tattoo work is multi-faceted but always comes from a place of service. Ant the Elder’s interest lies in the creation of tattoos that are fit for the body and the mind of the wearer, within the realm of the aesthetic language that their 15+ years of experience helped develop. Their expertise is rooted in sigil crafting, black work, ornamental, (art) history references, print making techniques emulations (woodcut, etching, engraving etc.), architecture and naturalist illustrations to name a few.

A tattoo being more than the simple application of an image onto the skin, the inter-dynamic at play throughout the whole process is taken into account. The psychological and cultural aspect of this practice is well understood and acknowledged with every single piece.

Ant the Elder has been tattooing since 2010.

Artefacts Making Practice: Analog Rituals

When it comes to artefacts making, this is what Ant refers to as Analog Rituals. Whether painting, ceramic, drawing, or other objects, they are the results of private ritual practices, holding the remnants of the meditation that birthed them. The marks, forms, and shapes then are often times stream of consciousness. They are the basis of their sigil work, that can be found in tattoo forms, existing half way between automatic drawings and automatic writing.

The artefacts are objects to hold, and place into your space, to reflect upon, and meditate. They exist to live by your side, their energy aligning with the purpose of their curation. They often are made off the materials that contributed to the ritual, true ritual residues, such as paint made of ashes of the incense that was burnt to put oneself into the state of meditation. They are talismans.

Performance Practice: Live Rituals

Performance is weaved through all aspect of life but at times there are displays that accentuate the performative aspect of a deliberate intention. In such times, Ant had created pieces to be witnessed, and experienced in a specific time and place. Their performance work is a way of sharing their creative process, and of manifesting specific intention, while furthering their research in ritual practice building.

Steeped into the acknowledgement that impermanence is the only certainty of existence, live rituals are moment to be experienced as such. They are fleeting moments, that keep their residual marks in the body at times, and in the mind as memories that no documentation can truly convey. Live rituals are to be lived.

Live rituals can and often do combine elements of their other practices.

Ant The Elder is based in London, UK and can be found regularly in New York and Los Angeles, USA. Other locations are announced via the newsletter.
Their work is visible on the thousands of humans that trusted their hands to mark their skin, and inhabits galleries, private collections and museums across the world. Ant The Elder is the only artist other on records to have been commissioned to tattoo by and inside the prestigious Natural History Museum in London.

Below you can find a non-exhaustive list of exhibitions and events that featured Ant the Elder’s work.