INIA TAYLOR III-
KEEPING THE TRADITION ALIVE
By Rik van Boeckel
Photos by Inia Taylor III and Rob Webster

Maori artist Inia Taylor III had done much for the renaissance of Ta Moko during the last decade. He got in touch with tattooing through his work as an art director for movies like The Piano and Once Were Warriors. The late Paulo Suluape was his teacher.

Inia was born to an English father and a Maori mother from the Ngati Raukawa tribe. His father was a child evacuee from the war and adopted by a Maori family in New Zealand. "He came from East London straight into the forest of New Zealand," says Inia. "The Maori there didn't speak any English. For my father, it was a totally different world. He grew up with Maori as his first language and horses as his main form of transport."

CARVERS
Inia's family has always been carvers and sculptors. Inia grew up with carving. "I have carved since I was 13 years old," he tells me. "I also make sculptures and paintings. Every single Inia in my family has been a carver or an artist. Therefore, I call myself Inia the Third. Inia the Second is still around, but the first Inia has passed away. We all were making art, so it's incredibly confusing. There are always questions like, which Inia made this piece of art, the first, the second or the third? I feel really proud of what my first uncle Inia did. He was the carver for the Maori queen and is the one that named me. He ended up living in England."

FORBIDDEN BY THE ENGLISH
Inia tells me that his ancestors were also tattooists. His family was forced to stop tattooing, because it was forbidden by the English in 1936. "A tattoo was quite normal among the Maori. Every tattoo made by a Maori was called a Moko, not just the one on the face," says Inia. "My grandmother was supposed to be tattooed, but she was the first in the family not to. She was the one telling me all the little stuff. Basically, Maori people were ashamed of their culture, and tattooing was seen as barbaric. We carried on carving. In this way we kept the tattoo patterns alive. But the tattoo techniques themselves vanished and are doomed to disappear."

ONCE WERE WARRIORS
Before he started tattooing, Inia worked as an art director. That's when the producers of Once Were Warriors asked him to design the tattoos for the Maori gang members in the movie. He did the same for the follow-up, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? Inia: "The job of an art director is to tell a story visually. The movie deals with domestic violence. I really wanted to find a way of making this film beautiful. I did that with the tattoos. I basically designed them all. During that time, 14 years ago, I hadn't any tattoos and never had been in a tattoo studio. For the film I had to draw the same tattoos every day, using the same Polaroid photograph as reference. Immediately, people reacted positively. They said, 'Inia, give me a tattoo.' Even in a tattoo shop they wanted one from me." When the movie was made, the revival of the Moko still had to start. During those days there was not much tattooing going on among the Maori. Inia says he was surprised by people's reactions. "I thought every Maori would enjoy the stuff, but that wasn't true. Basically, Maori people were at that time still ashamed of their own culture."

MAORI GANGS
When I ask Inia if the movie gives a realistic view of the life of the Maori and the gangs. He said, "It is still happening in New Zealand. The gangs are very extreme. What I drew for Once Were Warriors was an accentuation of that. What I am really proud of is the fact that the film changed things regarding domestic violence. Before the film was released things like the support system of women who are victims of domestic violence in New Zealand were ignored. When the film came along, for the next two elections, the main issues were to help to fund these bodies and to organize non-violence courses for men. Actually, it changed the course of politics in my country."

TATTOOS IN THE MOVIE
In the tattooing realm, Inia is inspired by the designs he knows as a carver. "They are based on tattoos of my family's particular style. A lot of my work owes much to carving, it's quite three-dimensional. I use the patterns of carving. They give the tattoos more depth. You say a lot more when you paint in three dimensions, as opposed to doing lines. Still, I do a lot of traditional hand tattooing. I make tattoos which are totally traditional. When it comes to tattoo machines, I feel that is really important that we take it another step further. I like to think how my ancestors would have tattooed, if they had had tattoo machines. We have new tools now. It gives us a chance to work in a way you can't with the hand tools, but it is a bit more difficult. "

AFTER THE MOVIE
Once the movie was finished, Inia went to a tattoo studio to learn how to tattoo the designs he made for the film. He wanted to learn the technique. "But I didn't know anything about tattoo technique," says Inia. "In New Zealand the tattooists were really scared of the fact that, when the Maori started to tattoo, they wouldn't have jobs anymore. So they didn't help me. For that reason I went to England. Usually, tattooists start on friends and family and they are brought up from there. And every Christmas they look at their worst tattoos. I didn't want to do that. I started to work in England with people like Alex Binnie and Adam Dutton. They taught me the technique. Those guys were open folks, and were totally intrigued by my designs. I gave them my information about the designs, and they sat down and told me how to tattoo this and that and for what reason. At the end, it was a really good exchange."

MEETING WITH PAULO SULUAPE
In England, Inia heard for the first time about the Samoan tattoo artist Paulo Suluape, who lived in New Zealand and was tragically murdered in 1999. "I realized he tattooed five people on my street. It took quite a while to meet him, because he wasn't easy to meet. He was quite suspicious. He said to me, 'Don't see me in the shop, see me at home.' There I was, sitting next to him on the couch. He said nothing. I handed him some magazines and some articles. Then he realized who I was and what I had done. He had seen Once Were Warriors. He said, 'Oh, it was you!'"

The wall of Suluape's house was covered with many photographs. "Right in the middle of it I saw a picture of my great great grandfather, Weremu Te Manawha," says Inia. "I said to Paulo, 'What are you doing with a picture of my great great grandfather on the wall?' He answered, 'It was given to me at the Maori queen's residence. Weremu Te Manawha was one of the last Maori tattooists.' I said, 'I know.' He said, 'Where have you been all this time?' He had been trying to find Maoris to start teaching the traditional tools to, but he didn't know where they were. Luckily, he trusted me. He taught me all the traditional techniques. Nobody knew that he was also a really amazing artist with machines. He could draw incredible portraits of people. He was also a great painter. He was driven from a lot of angles. He taught me how to work with tattoo machines and how to make them. We made a whole lot of tattoo machines together."

MOKO INK
When Inia met Paulo Suluape, he was still working in the film industry. He continued to see him during the weekends. Inia tells how Suluape reacted. "He asked me, 'Inia, do you, Maori, take your tattoos off during the weekend?' I answered, 'No. I wear them all week.' He said, 'Why are you asking something from the people you tattoo that is more than you are asking of yourself?' What he meant was, how can you ask these people to give their bodies and skin 24 hours a day if you are only interested in doing this during the weekends. At that point there was nothing I could say. So I asked, 'What can we do about it?' He said, 'You can open a shop so that anybody can come and ask you questions. You would be in the same place, every day, every week, and you are accountable for your actions. You will not be moving around and tattooing in different places. You ought to have an honorable place where this could happen.' So, in 1988, I started the first dedicated Maori tattoo shop in the world, Moko Ink, in Auckland, North Island. Today, I devote all my time to tattooing, although I sometimes work as an art director for movies."

MAORI TATTOOS
The discovery of the beauty of Maori art is something that happened during the last decade, through its carvings, its sculptures and its tattoos. "Maori are known for having a beautiful art form," says Inia. "This art always relates to family and nature. These things are, as far as I am concerned, more important now than they were before, when we lived in a tribe and we didn't know anyone else and were isolated. Because we travel around the world now and are far away from our families, it's twice as important to have our families on us. It's important to keep the tradition alive. And it is still important for someone to get something totally personal on his body that no one else necessarily can read. That it is from the heart, absolutely individual."

REFLECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Inia doesn't only tattoo Maori designs, he also makes tattoos from other parts of Polynesia like Samoa. "All the people from Polynesia are related. We have been in New Zealand for about 42 generations, but, before that, we were in Tahiti. Yet the Maori artwork is different from Tahitian artwork. They are all different reactions to different environments. When you go to Samoa and you look at the colors and the shadows on and between the trees, you see the pe'a. When you go to a forest in New Zealand, you will see in the colors and the shadows on the ground, the Maori Moko. They are about the place, not about the genetic people. They reflect the place. We all have the desire to be at one with nature, one with the environment, with the family. That's the motivation for doing these tattoos."

STAIRS
When I ask Inia how he processes the reaction to the environment in designs he tattoos in the Netherlands, he answers, "That's an interesting question. I am influenced by Holland, by Amsterdam, by people here, in terms of technique. I am influenced by Dutch tattoo artists like Henk Schiffmacher and Jeroen Franken. I learned much from their technique. You know, I have one design with a mountain pattern. I made that in New Zealand. I changed the mountains to stairs. Holland is totally flat, but when you open a door, there is a stair. I feel like Sir Edmund Hillary climbing the stairs." He laughs loudly. "In a way it's quite different tattooing a person from the Western world," he adds. "In a way it's freer. In tattooing a Maori person you have to be really aware of what tribe they are from and what patterns are appropriate for that person. But on the other hand, it's all essentially the same. We all have two parents. Genetically we are all very similar. The whole race thing is ridiculous. Our similarities are bigger than our differences. That's why I am doing this work. I like to speak of these similarities. I find that inspiring. We are all human beings. We show our human dignity by our art. The Dutch in the sixteenth century were masters in their paintings; they showed that by that their humanity. When you look at the Egyptians, at the pyramids, they showed their humanity with those achievements. When we think of Thai Buddhists in these huge temples, you think of their humanity. And the humanity of the Maori was and still is carved into deep skin."

"He toi whakairoa he mana tangata" (Wherever is artistic excellence is human dignity).

Address:
Inia Taylor III
Moko Ink
505 Great North Road, Grey Lynn
Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Tel: 006493760075.
www.mokoink.com