Tat­too­ing is an in­dige­nous art form that has been prac­ticed across the globe since the very ear­ly days of mankind. One day in 2017, de­spite not re­al­ly know­ing each oth­er, Gesiye Souza-Okpo­fab­ri and Maya Cross-Lovelace went to talk to Obasi Springer about their (per­son­al) tat­too ideas and left as tat­too ap­pren­tices. Be­fore that day, the two had nev­er spent time to­geth­er. Al­though they at­tend­ed Bish­op Anstey High School at the same time for five years, they some­how nev­er even met. How­ev­er, as fate would have it, they met when they did, to go on this cre­ative jour­ney to­geth­er.

Gesiye, born of a Niger­ian fa­ther and Trinida­di­an moth­er, has al­ways been known for do­ing art and cre­at­ing through dif­fer­ent medi­ums. For the past two years she has been learn­ing the craft of tat­too­ing but this isn’t all when it comes to art for her. She stud­ied art dur­ing her uni­ver­si­ty years and al­so has ex­pe­ri­ence in pho­tog­ra­phy, film, dance and mu­sic. She told We Mag: “I’ve al­ways been at­tract­ed to body mod­i­fi­ca­tion and tat­toos, from draw­ing on my­self in pri­ma­ry school to get­ting my first ink. I re­mem­ber want­i­ng to learn how to tat­too even be­fore I ac­tu­al­ly thought that it was some­thing that I could do pro­fes­sion­al­ly.” Like­wise, Maya has al­ways done art and been in­ter­est­ed in dif­fer­ent forms of artis­tic ex­pres­sion, in­clud­ing pho­tog­ra­phy and fash­ion. In the process of search­ing for what she want­ed to do with her life, she re­alised that she want­ed to do some­thing that in­volved draw­ing more, cre­at­ing with her hands, and in­ter­fac­ing with peo­ple in a per­son­al way. Tat­too­ing an­swered that call.

To­day, the two are artists who cre­ate tat­toos as a rad­i­cal ex­pres­sion of self love through ‘Bald Babes Ink’. As they learnt more about tat­too­ing, it be­gan to de­vel­op in­to some­thing else, some­thing in­ten­tion­al. To the cre­ative duo, get­ting a tat­too is trans­for­ma­tion­al—it has the ca­pac­i­ty to change your re­la­tion­ship with your body. As tat­tooed women them­selves, they ad­mit to hav­ing gone through the ex­pe­ri­ence of think­ing about their bod­ies and their skin as an ex­plo­ration of them­selves and more, so they take joy in be­ing able to share that. “With that in mind,” said the cre­ative duo, “we sought af­ter cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment that is in­ten­tion­al­ly cen­tred around the ex­pe­ri­ences of women, peo­ple of colour and LGBTI+ folks and a space that feels safe and com­fort­able for any­one who comes in.” Here is some more of what the bald babes had to share with us in an in­ter­view WE had with them:

What are you all work­ing on at present, what is keep­ing you ex­cit­ed?

We re­al­ly want to get in­to mur­al paint­ing. We’ve ac­tu­al­ly just start­ed work­ing on one in our new stu­dio space. Oth­er than that, we both cre­ate art in so many dif­fer­ent ways and want to keep ex­plor­ing that. We love play­ing and ex­per­i­ment­ing with cre­ativ­i­ty and don’t feel lim­it­ed by any par­tic­u­lar medi­um. Our friends and our com­mu­ni­ty keep us grow­ing and glow­ing and feel­ing ex­cit­ed about shar­ing our art.

What are some of your trea­sured mile­stones?

Some mile­stones that we feel re­al­ly hap­py about are our tat­too ap­pren­tice­ship with Obasi Springer; learn­ing how to screen­print with artist Greer Jones Wood­ham then mak­ing and sell­ing our own Bald Babes Merch in the form of tees and totes; and throw­ing a re­al­ly sweaty Bald Babes Bash­ment ear­li­er this year to cel­e­brate our an­niver­sary. Our biggest one to date, is mov­ing out of our men­tor’s stu­dio and in­to our own space on Tra­garete Road. We’re now shar­ing space with Idle­wood, an artist hub owned by de­sign­er, Mar­cus Ling and man­aged by artist, Omar Jar­ra. We’ll be hav­ing our first open house at the stu­dio on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 20th. We’re al­so par­tic­i­pat­ing in our first ever Tat­too Fest at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence this Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 15th.

What is your ul­ti­mate goal or biggest dream for your fu­ture as a team?

A tat­too tour would be amaz­ing; we would love to trav­el with our craft and go to in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions and con­tin­ue to learn and ex­plore. We want to raise funds to do pub­lic mu­rals. It is im­por­tant to us that the art we cre­ate is ac­ces­si­ble. An­oth­er ma­jor goal is to bring Bur­na Boy, pop­u­lar Afrobeats artiste, to T&T. Any­one who can help us achieve this will be great­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed. Ul­ti­mate­ly, our goals all cen­tre around us­ing our cre­ativ­i­ty to build mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with our com­mu­ni­ty.

Why do you do what you do

Gesiye: “I love mak­ing art per­son­al and ac­ces­si­ble. I love the con­nec­tions that are cre­at­ed through this art, and the free­dom that I feel get­ting tat­tooed and cre­at­ing tat­toos. There’s some­thing spe­cial about tak­ing own­er­ship of your body and claim­ing your pow­er to adorn it in what­ev­er way feels right for you. Usu­al­ly, tat­too­ing ex­ists out­side of the so­cial and cul­tur­al norms we grow up with and it can be so free­ing to be able to step out­side of those rules and fol­low your heart. It’s al­so just the coolest work I’ve ever done. I get to cre­ate art, work on my own sched­ule and spend time with my friends. It’s beau­ti­ful.”

Maya: “I re­al­ly en­joy the process of tat­too­ing, in­ter­act­ing with some­one and cre­at­ing some­thing unique (for that per­son). I al­so en­joy de­sign­ing tat­toos based on a theme. When some­one gets a tat­too and they love it, it’s re­al­ly ful­fill­ing to see. I like that im­me­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion of my job. Al­though tat­too­ing is what we do, we are artists and en­joy cre­at­ing out­side of that as well; I love that be­ing a tat­too artist al­lows me to do so. Be­ing tat­too artists is a po­lit­i­cal state­ment about our bod­ies and the re­la­tion­ship we have with them and how we agree to take up space. That is very em­pow­er­ing.