Accept it: You’re a millennial. If you were born between 1984 and 20o4, when the term “cyberspace” appeared, and the Web 2.0 was launched; if you think days seem trivial and you’re constantly bored, even with entertaining devices and media at your disposal, there’s no doubt you’re a millennial. You’d love to change the world, but your Instagram profile has less that 800 followers, and you don’t even remember your Twitter password. The real thing is that even if you had your desired number of followers, you couldn’t change anything, because you only use these platforms to update your status and share your breakfast.
We millennials fall in love thanks to the Internet; we abruptly divide our friends following a “likes” tab, and everybody sees our lives in pictures through a screen. That’s why the only thing that truly belongs to us is our body: our means to sense our world is the temple we live in.
Victor Zabuga’s designs reflect that void we want to fill with tears and superficial problems of everyday’s life, which mean millennial problems.
This young designer, who lives in Berlin, imagines that people interact due to mystical bonds, that is, bonds that used to be imaginary or attributed to physiological issues, but that now Google, Spotify, Facebook, and Pinterest’s algorithms successfully decipher. Those are programmed coincidences that are born, grow and are crushed thanks to our Wi-Fi signals.
What do we millennials say when we speak about love? Still there’s no one capable of explaining why our romantic stories, as diverse and sporadic as they may be, are unintended copies of Raymond Carver’s short stories: abrupt and mysterious endings, exaggerated feelings of weariness and guilt, anticipated abandonments and losses, boredom, etc. Let’s say that thanks to the books we download from the Internet, we know love lasts three years at most.
So, when it’s time to talk about love, we really don’t do it. We’d rather avoid the topic because what really matters is now and we’re only here to enjoy the present. Then, how would that phrase reflecting our eternal indifference look on our arm or thigh?
With that trendy naif font, those tattoos will define us perfectly. While the Romantics were represented by their particular goth calligraphy, we have naif, that –apparently– is unique due to how badly it’s made. We arrived late to everything, and the only thing we can do is to learn how to write again, because even now that computers can do anything faster, like taking voice dictations, nothing will substitute a good job made by ourselves.
Victor Zabuga’s strokes resemble those of the sailors and convicts from the Eighteenth Century, who were condemned to life imprisonment (whether to stay in some jail or at sea). They were attached to only one belonging: their bodies. In the same way, the only thing that defines us is our body and, of course, our desire; that’s why we find our own identities in that composition of strokes and saturation. We’d love to rewrite history, and the only empty spot to do so is our skin. You’re a millennial: embrace it.
Getting a tattoo proves, through its ink strokes, the things we are unable to say with words. Check these Minimalistic Tattoos That Have Great and Powerful Meanings. You can also get inspired by these 30 Hamsa Tattoos to Enlighten Your Soul.
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Sources:
Victor Zabuga’s Instagram and Facebook Sites.
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Translated by María Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards
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