The layered nature of our inner worlds has always fascinated me. Exploring dierent parts of my psyche, “juju” was my attempt at finding a path between the happy-go-lucky persona and some of the more complicated areas of my thinking. Although initially, it was supposed to be an alter ego of some sort, the idea of juju has now transcended its purpose of grounding me at times of diculty and has turned into an almost performative symbol of finding one’s optimistic self.
Juju was a personal project of mine, exploring new techniques and mediums using human skin as a canvas, not in a commercial way of tattooing but in a more intimate, personal way of passing the designs to another person with the traditional way of tattooing: hand poking. I both worked with conceptual ignorant-style flash packs I designed while also making special designs for people who demand their own Jujus. The meaning-making process operates with introspection; the smiling design turns into a personal interpretation beyond the design I just illustrated; with new contexts of their own, they find a new life and definition, becoming characters of their owners.
The Instagram account was almost like a performative act of its own, with all the extremely whimsical/playful captions and stories consisting of smiley posts from Instagram and the photos of the smileys people saw in their daily life and sent me.
