We're very sorry for our english speaking friends but most of the androgynette's Tattoos are based on french puns that would sound weird if translated Never at a loss for pithy and heartfelt quips, Androgynette tends to wounded souls with the help of her trusty tattoo machine. She works out of her private shop ‘La Main d’Oeuvre’ in Nantes, France, following several years spent in Brussels, principally at the quintessential Boucherie Moderne. An engaged tattooist, who loves a bit of banter, she defines herself as an ‘artist-raconteur’. She invents stories on skin to help people reclaim their personal narratives and bodies. Androgynette is not one to mince her words, and states loud and clear her engagement in the fight for gender equality and against violence towards women, both causes close to her heart. In a nutshell, a big-hearted tattoo artist!
I’d like to know a bit more about your relationship with tattooing, tell me about the first tattoo you got yourself.
I was nearly 18, a couple of months before my birthday. I went into my small town’s tattoo parlor with a friend and started flicking through their books. They weren’t really books with drawings, but had stuff taken from the internet that they made available to clients. I came across a quote from one of my favorite authors, who I was reading a lot of at the time, Kahlil Gibran. It’s a phrase written in Arabic which reads “Love is the only flower which grows without the aid of the seasons”. And I don’t know why but I stole the sheet of paper, put it in my bag and left. This was before leaving for Morocco to see my Mom, who was living there. In the end, I got a tattoo of that phrase at a different parlor. Funnily enough, it turned out well because that tattooist had worked in my parents’ bar as a barman before becoming a tattoo artist. What’s amusing is that I had done the same! It’s like karma, even if I don’t really believe in it, it makes me laugh when things like that happen through pure coincidence.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your pseudonym? Where does it come from?
At the time, on Facebook, I couldn’t be bothered with people looking me up. I don’t like it when people turn up years later thinking ‘hey, let’s see how she turned out’. So I was looking for some kind of alias, and I thought of my aunt who’s called ‘Gynette’. And after thinking of ‘Aunty Gyne’ that brought me to ‘gyn-androgynous-androgynette’, which also meant that there was ‘André’ in there, which is my Dad’s name, there’s the ‘Gynette’ from my aunt, and the ‘Gy’ from ‘Gisèle’, my Mom’s name. All my origins are in that name. Also, at the time I was a lot more androgynous. I still am, it’s just that it’s less visible in relation to traditional codes. I will always see myself as androgynous rather than feminine or masculine.
How did you get into tattooing? You seem to have tried a few different paths before studying art.
Yes I’ve done a lot of totally different things. I started in social work, I wanted to be a caseworker, then I got into public relations, then I studied law. I tried quite a few things before falling into graphic design by accident. I was in Morocco and I had some friends who were leaving for Brussels to try out for an art school there – l’école Saint-Luc. I didn’t stay and started working as a bartender. It’s a job I know how to do because I was born into that environment, like Obelix, “I fell into the magic potion as a child”. It’s a job that I feel at home in. As a bartender I met people who had tattoos, we started discussing tattooing, and one brought me a magazine with an article about Peter Aurisch in it. He was coming as a guest to the Boucherie Moderne and needed a place to stay, so I told him he could stay at mine with his girlfriend. At the end of the week, he noticed that I sketched a lot and that I had a couple of tattoo sessions coming up with Léa Nahon or Jef and he told me “you like drawing, you like tattoos, why don’t you start tattooing?”. And that’s how it came about. I mentioned it to Léa, who told me “we’re looking for an apprentice, you can start tomorrow at 11am”. So that was that, I didn’t get much sleep for the next 6 months but I had a whale of a time.
An apprenticeship with Léa Nahon is a great place to start!
Yes it was really cool. There wasn’t just Léa, she hired me but there was a whole team; Léa, Guillaume, Jenzie. I was there half of the week, then Yannonyme did the other half - we were both apprentices at the Boucherie at the time. I got so much advice from everyone, Jenzie was like a big sister to me, Benjo and Antoine were also like big brothers who would slap me on the wrist when I needed it. You learn a lot too when you go to conventions with them. In the past, you had a tutor or mentor who kept you with them for a long time, now you’re an apprentice your whole life because there are so many techniques and machines which are always changing, and you can really learn from the newcomers too. So the best tattooists that you meet are the ones who are passionate about art and who got into tattooing through that, by chance. People who have an artistic bent to start with, who turn up and help the profession evolve. It’s these people who fascinate me and the ones who you’ll be learning from your whole life.
How long have you been tattooing?
Come this summer, end of June-beginning July, it’ll be 10 years since I first set foot in a shop as an apprentice. Today I have people coming to see me and saying “I’ve been wanting a tattoo from you for years, I’ve been following your work since I was 14” and you say to yourself “ah OK, damn, I’ve been doing this a while!”.
Before opening your shop in Nantes, you spent a lot of time ‘on the road’.
Yes, there was a moment where I reached saturation point and I felt the need to go and do guest spots and meet other people. From the moment when I started to get well-known, people saw me in a different way. That’s kind of disappointing. I’m a really sincere person with strong values and I can’t and won’t turn my back on that.
Is that also why you came back to France and opened your own shop, Main d’Oeuvre, in Nantes?
I came back to France to join a team and actually it didn’t go as well as planned. I was pregnant and I had to open a shop and ‘voila’! It wasn’t the original plan, I took on a shop because I didn’t have the choice, and actually it’s what suits me best. But in the long term I would really like to work as part of a good team so I hope that either I’ll be able to build one or try the experience again. I have a really horizontal approach to human relationships, I need us all to be on equal terms.
You’ve hosted quite a few guests: what does that bring you on a human, technical or artistic level when you welcome other artists?
Seeing friends! I only invite friends, or friends of friends so for me the relational aspect is important. In France we often work around the same themes, so when I managed to get Marine Elise from Lyon, who has a pretty distinctive style, or Arthur Tête de Mouton from Belgium, you feel like you’re also doing something for the tattoo scene. Letting people discover something different.
I’d like us to talk a bit about your style, which is easily recognizable. Do you have a definition of your style? What’s your background and what choices brought you to what you’re doing today?
There was a time when I needed to be in my little bubble as dotwork takes so much time and it’s such a great technique. At the same time, it was the easiest technique to learn quickly in order to get good results and be able to make a living. I was a huge fan of Rafel Delalande, one of my biggest tattoos is by him, so there was that black ink influence, which from time to time was put into words. Actually, it came from my feelings, my emotions and became almost a trademark. It’s vital to a point where the words take over the images and the drawing ceases to exist in the end.
Has tattooing become, for you, a way to express both healing and liberating emotions?
I wouldn’t say it’s become that, but rather that’s it always been that. It’s something that comes out a lot in my tattoos. Well before I even existed, people got tattooed at important moments in their lives, whether happy or sad. I think that a tattoo is almost a ritualistic act, even if I’m not into particularly esoteric or even cultural definitions or whatever concerning that aspect, I do think that we tend to get tattooed at key moments in our lives. It’s more noticeable in my work as people come to see me because they really need me to help them to embody something, either through words or drawings.
You offer both flash tattoos and custom orders. How do create a piece with a client? How do you manage to adapt the story that they’re telling you?
I ask them the question “What do you want your tattoo to say? What do you want it to express?”. That question encourages the client to talk, and there’s a moment where they’ll say a word which jumps out, and that’s where I’ll start digging. Then we find, in their story and what the person tells me, the thing that corresponds to them. It’s quite a funny experience because it doesn’t take long, between 10 and 30 minutes, tops. Last time someone came in and said “that guy made me black and blue” so it turned into “see life in colors”. We totally changed the symbolism, turning it into something more positive. We came up with a cute wordplay, it’s not a well-known expression, or one that people use much. For example, I might have said “he gave me a hard time”. We all communicate in different ways, and I take the way people express themselves and use it to tell their story. That’s what’s so great about it.
It’s a real sign of trust to be able to express people’s suffering, trauma or conflicts. So human relationships take up a really important place in your project and in that exchange with each person.
Yes! I couldn’t imagine life without it, I was brought up with very human values and I need them to be present every day.
You use wordplay to convey messages and emotions, you also use a lot of crossing out to reveal the meaning of words. Have you always enjoyed playing with words, has it always been a means of expression for you?
I know there was a time where it started playing an important part. During the year when I was suffering from depression, I only chatted on MSN with my closest friends. We spent our time ribbing each other, having verbal battles. We were big fans of the Klub des Loosers (a French hip-hop group). Rap was as much an influence as it was an inspiration, it still is today.
You’re committed to gender equality, self-acceptance and body positivity, and to the fight against violence towards women. How do you manage to integrate this civic engagement and your convictions into your artistic practice?
From the moment I’m in my shop, it’s easy. I see people through their personality and not through their gender or the color of their skin. That’s really what I want to focus on. And also not lumping people into a stereotype. That’s the great advantage in my space: anyone who comes here is in a safe space, they can feel secure here. If something doesn’t feel right, I say it from the off: if I do or say anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, you have to let me know.
I’d like to talk about the project ‘Sois toi’ (‘Be Yourself’). You are an advocate for self-acceptation as a tool for liberation from the demands made on women. Can you explain what the project consists of, for those who don’t know it, and how it came about?
It really is ‘be yourself’ because the original saying was ‘be pretty and keep quiet’ whereas you shouldn’t have to be either particularly pretty or keep quiet. It’s not ‘be yourself and be pretty’ because the obligation to be attractive shouldn’t exist. What is vital is to be yourself and yet it’s the most complicated thing in our society. I feel like there’s a lot of hypocrisy so that everyone can be popular on social media, which means that the majority of people aren’t being themselves any more. They are being what we expect them to be. For me there is also this aspect of identity and personality that isn’t straightforward and has been a real battle for me. The ‘sois toi’ (be yourself) project aims to allow people to communicate, to get closer to each other and actually I like this idea of exchange and open mindedness. The goal isn’t to convince people but to communicate, evolve and re-assess themselves and their ideas.
Do you know how many times you’ve tattooed it?
No! I’ve never counted!
You also fight against gender prejudices, and your alias is a good illustration of that. You had flashes ‘féminin/féminine’ (male feminine/female feminine) and also ‘garçon manqué, fille réussie’ (Pretend boy / Happy girl – NB: The word for tomboy in French literally translates as ‘failed boy’ ). Why is this an important subject for you?
Because it’s integral to our bodies, so putting it onto skin is coherent for me. There’s always a connection between our bodies and their appearance. It’s a shame but that’s how it is, it’s how society works. I know that I’ve had difficulty with that and even today I don’t recognize myself in the classification of feminine gender or masculine gender roles, the fact that women can wear pants but guys still can’t wear skirts, for example. This inequality really gets on my nerves. For example, all these expressions like ‘tomboy’, no! Or when I hear things like, ‘You should try to be more feminine’ or ‘you need to man up’ I get really annoyed.
You’re also engaged in the fight against violence towards women and you created a flash ‘hearts beat, love doesn’t’ (‘Le coeur bat, l’amour pas’) that you also made into a t-shirt in association with The SIMONES (a French feminist clothing brand in homage to Simone Veil). 1 Euro is donated to a charity for each item sold. Can you tell us a bit more about this project?
This is the problem with the patriarchy: it trains men to become the sort of dominant male who will try and objectify other human beings, where they have to master everything, possess everything, control everything and it’s really harmful for everyone. For me, this idea is totally unacceptable. I have a close friend who works for the CVF (an organization working against violence towards women) in Liege, Belgium, so originally I came up with ‘hearts beat, love doesn’t’ for them. Every time I tattooed it or when I sold prints, all proceeds were donated directly to that association. After I moved to Nantes, and I was going to do a collab with The SIMONES, I thought that would be a good way to get the message back into the spotlight, except that now the donations go to a different charity, as we’re in France. They can’t donate the money to a Belgian association.
Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?
The mindset is to be ultra positive and pass that on to a maximum of people because that’s what we really need the most. And to be as socially responsible as possible. It’s important to stimulate the brain by allowing it to be happy. That’s the objective behind my tattoos: staying true to principles and helping others grow in a positive way. @landrogynette
