Sara Swanson is a tattoo artist and since 2005 run the tattoo studio StaDemonia Tattoo together with partner and master Soledad Rodriguez Aznar, first in Barcelona and since 2017 in Stockholm. In addition to tattooing, we arrange art exhibitions by queer artists, have arranged the mini-festivals Queer Art Fest Stockholm and Queer Tattoo Expo Stockholm as well as a number of lectures about tattooing and public talks about art and tattooing. We also invite other queer tattoo artists to guest tattoo with us and participate in the conversations.

A dream we have is to also collect queer tattoo history, something that for many reasons is difficult to get hold of due to stigmatization of both tattooing and gay/bi/trans identities and activities e.g. Or that fact that tattooing has not been documented to a large extent from the perspective of the tattooed or the tattooer. During this year Sara starts a project together with photographer Del la Grace Volcano, who has documented queer culture and created queer art for the last 50 years! We are now looking for you who were tattooed during the 80s or earlier, to talk either individually or in a group about how it was, thoughts about the tattoo, etc., everything is of interest. At the end of the project some people/tattoos will be portrayed by Del and photographs and texts will be exhibited. You choose whether what we talk about can be shown in text or image – everything we talk about gets your OK before/if it is used in any context

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Please spread to tattooed friends who may be interested! The tattoo does not have to be done in a queer context, but we are interested in people who identified themselves then, or identify themselves now, as lgbtqi+.

Write to sara@stademonia.com and we’ll meet over a fika.

More info about Del la Grace Volcano: https://www.delagracevolcano.se/ or in Dazed.

First foto: Tattoo by Sara Swanson

Second foto: Soledad Aznar portrayed by Del la Grace Volcano from the project Gender Optional Profiles of Courage