In the last few decades, tattoos have become a mainstay in pop culture. As parlors around the world get ready to celebrate Friday the 13th with flashes galore, our Pop-ink package examines how these skin markings have evolved beyond their traditional roots — from fandoms to family. In this reported feature, writer Skyli Alvarez explores the significance of “spooky” tattoos beyond Friday the 13th flashes and how, for some, their ink runs deeper than you might think.
From hyper-realistic skeleton sleeves to tiny patchwork pieces of ghosts, there’s no questioning the tattoo world’s affinity for all things macabre, and Friday the 13th takes it to another level. Although such tatting trends may come and go, some are as everlasting as the ink themselves, but they’re often not as sinister in meaning as they appear on skin. Take, for example, tats of the number 13; as legend has it, a sailor once got this now “unlucky” number tattooed so that any misfortune he encountered would pass him by. To the dismay of black cat and sidewalk crack avoiders, since the ‘90s, this tale has evolved into the widespread belief in getting inked on Friday the 13th as a sign of good luck.
Often occurring multiple times each year, Friday the 13th inspires endless flash sheets and styles of festive tats, equally bone-chilling as they are sentimental. The tradition prompts customers to queue up in front of their favorite tattoo shops from the wee hours of the morning, transforming a seemingly superstitious day into one of thrill and community.
Tattoos lie in the space between memory and presence, as both the final work and the very process of its completion are modes of storytelling. The former has tethered recipients to broader identities – sailors, Friday-the-13th enthusiasts, collectors of unique body art – while the latter has kept these traditions alive. Even as one’s relationship with their ink evolves with age, its meaning endures and is far more than skin deep. Whether one selects an original design by their artist or a repeatable old-school classic, the cultural and ancestral ties of Friday the 13th’s flashes are piercingly profound for the tattooers and the tattooed alike, especially this month as it coincides with Latinx Heritage Month.
“Each tattoo tells a personal story [and is] a connection to the past or a statement about the present,” tattoo artist Ulises Gonzalez, who has long embraced darker motifs in his work regardless of specific dates, tells Teen Vogue. “It’s a form of expression that transcends words and allows our identities and emotions to show on our body and [be carried] with us at all times.”
To Gonzalez, tattoos are almost talismanic, and the art form has become a vessel through which he fuses personal, familial, and cultural histories. Currently based in Los Angeles but born and raised in Mexico City, the artist takes much inspiration from earliest recollections of his hometown and of his own Latinidad. He considers his work to be “Mexican Neo-Baroque,” conceptually mixing hauntingly “religious themes and exaggerated ornamentation” with “popular imagery and folk art.” By abstracting Catholic and Christian imagery with that of Indigenous Mesoamerica, he recalls his country’s own complex history of syncretism.
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Through tattooing, Gonzalez calls forth the Mexico City of his youth: Hearing the dancers who practiced their performance routines by his home, going to and from church and tianguis, and seeing Santa Muerte iconography and Día de los Muertos ofrendas. Gonzalez honors his family’s past, eternalizing what was through his art. In turn, the ephemera he both collects and creates serve as visual memories. To him, the city’s colorful market stalls, street signs, murals, and eclecticism around this time of year all echo the country’s folklore, which he has brought along with him to California.
In preparation for his Friday the 13th flash-tattoo event this month, Gonzalez recently crafted a sheet of flash reminiscent of familiar Día de los Muertos imagery that he grew up with, from stylized skeletons to cobwebbed floral motifs. They’re based on the early-20th century calavera and Catrina engravings by Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posadas, who is best known for his La Calavera Catrina woodcut, a ubiquitous image of the holiday and of modern Mexican identity at large.
Created in 1910, Posadas’s cartoon is understood to have originally been a satirical response to Mexican elites who subscribed to European fashion trends. However, after his death, it was misinterpreted as a caricature of working-class Mexican women who did the same. It has since been recontextualized as an emblem of national identity through artists such as Diego Rivera and movements like Mexican muralism, becoming a reminder of an inevitable shared fate despite material wealth and earthly possessions.
Far more elaborate than the “scary” or “spooky” tattoos you'd typically see of skeletons, this symbol is reminiscent of ancient Mesoamerican beliefs regarding the cyclical nature of life and death. Gonzalez has long been an admirer of Posadas’ illustrations and has done countless tattoos of and inspired by them throughout his career. Within the realm of flash tats and beyond, “his Catrinas are iconic symbols, and year after year, his images are used as part of [our] cultural tradition,” he says.
La Catrinas’ likeness continues to be reimagined and reinterpreted amongst tattoo artists and wearers. Currently, artist Vanya Priego is working on a Día de los Muertos back piece based on Laurie Lipton’s hyperrealistic drawings of the holiday. “Our beloved Día de los Muertos brings us the opportunity to gather as a community and not only mourn in pain but honor the lives our family and friends had," Priego, who’s based in Mexico City, tells Teen Vogue. “As a culture, we really have the chance to relate to death in a healthy way.”
Priego grew up surrounded by nature and religiosity, so much of her work concerns itself with spiritual, natural, and mythological subject matter. She uses tattooing as a means of investigating these and finding grounding within her body.
Both Gonzalez and Priego draw inspiration not only from the landscape of their homeland but also from those who inhabit it. “The tattoo scene in Mexico is really special, [as is] the rest of Latin America’s,” Priego says. To her, Mexico’s studios are rich with an amalgam of ideas and stories told by local tattooers, clients from abroad, and traveling guest artists. “From music to even food and the way [they] interact with each other,” her Mexican heritage, environment, and fellow creatives influence her pieces “in so many ways.” Gonzalez, too, owes much of his artistic interests to his close circle of family and friends, who encouraged him to further his pursuit of tattooing early on in his career.
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For other Latinx tattooers, artistic inspiration and family are one and the same. Artist Alondra Arena's father has been tattooing for as long as she’s been alive, and she remembers attending tattoo conventions with him during her youth. Upon graduating high school, as she weighed out prospective career paths, she began tattooing on fake skin and has been immersed in the practice since.
“Pretty much since I was a baby, I always knew I was going to be a tattoo artist and follow in my father's footsteps,” says Arena, who was born in Mexico and moved to the United States at eight months old. Though she is in the process of opening up her own tattoo shop, she currently works at her dad’s Mayan Ink Tattoo. Arena explains how the shop’s name reminds her of their roots and honors their ancestors, who themselves likely used tattoos and body modifications as indications of spiritual devotion.
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The bulk of Arena’s works centers on natural elements, such as clients’ birth flowers or those in memory of loved ones, which she most enjoys transforming “into something customers can see, because it becomes a kind of memorial for them.” This week, she says she looks forward to seeing regulars and newcomers at Mayan Ink’s first Friday the 13th flash event, where she hopes to give back to local residents and provide friends and spouses with eerily celebratory, matching pieces.
Likewise, through festive flash and modern takes on timeless imagery, Gonzalez and his patrons find a shared sense of aesthetic and symbolic appreciation for the pieces being inked and, in doing so, imbue them with personal significance. “Even though I choose the images [based on] my personal taste, there are always people who connect with them for their own reasons,” he explains. “They are not tattooing my stories; they are actually tattooing their own.”
