EXBERLINER Issue 170, April 2018

BRAZIL IN BERLIN
The girl
with the gun
The power of punk sent
Luci Lou on a tattoo odyssey
from São Paolo to Berlin.
By Emily May
The tattoo gun wasn’t Luci Lou’s first passion. “I found
genetics fascinating, and wanted to be a microbiologist,
or a marine biologist… but punk rock changed me,” the
São Paolo native laughs, explaining that her favourite
bands – Bad Religion, “and of course Sepultura, the biggest
metal band in Brazil!” – heightened her awareness of animal
rights. “I would have had to do a lot of tests on animals, including
vivisection to be able to graduate. I thought, shit, I have to
do something different!”
Her original solution: graphic design. She paid her way
through university by doing tattoos, a trick she’d picked up
before she was even old enough to set foot in a studio. “When
I was 16, I co-ran this record shop in São Paulo’s Rock Gallery,
and I rented the spare room to a tattoo artist. She’d ask me
to do drawings for her sometimes, and in return she began to
teach me tattooing.”
Leaving Brazil at 18 to fulfil her Wanderlust, her side gig
became her main occupation. From Buenos Aires to London
(where she completed her official tattoo training at New Wave
Tattoo), with stops in Milan and Mexico in between, Lou
moved to Berlin in 2016, on the invitation of reputed Mitte
studio Berlin Ink. “Luci had guested with us a couple of times
and she was incredibly popular,” says manager Niki Ianiro.
“As a woman it can be hard to be taken seriously in the tattoo
industry. But Luci’s experience and incredible precision earned
her respect in the profession. She’s great!”
Now Lou is one of the 10 international artists working
there on a regular basis. Customers clamour for her colourful
designs that mix art nouveau, graffiti and retro floral patterns,
and are largely influenced by her travels. “I’ve been to so many
countries and I’m a bit like a sponge,” she explains, leafing
through some sketches. “I also do a lot of mandala patterns,
which are very popular in Berlin.”
German Palomeque
German Palomeque
Lou is reputed for
her colourful
designs that mix
art nouveau,
graffiti and retro
floral patterns.
Although she doesn’t speak German, communication has
never been a problem for Lou, even when it comes to complicated
sleeves and cover-ups. “I even had a customer who was
mute! I don’t know how we managed, all I know is she must
have liked it because she’s kept coming back for more!”
The 41-year-old is covered in ink herself, each tattoo corresponding
to a friend or fellow artist. “Stizzo from Milan did a
diamond heart on the back of my knee, Allan Graves from London
did a heart with a spider crawling on it as a tribute to my
favourite Ramones song, ‘Poison Heart’...” She’s grateful for
Berlin’s massive, supportive Brazilian community – “I’ve got
some very good Brazilian friends, and also customers!” Most
commiserate with her about the culture shock of German
bureaucracy. “If you think of it in terms of art – in Brazil it’s
all about curves, and colour and improvised harmony, whereas
Germany is the Bauhaus with lots of squares and straight lines
and preordained functionality. For us, it’s sometimes difficult
to understand why things have to be so inflexible!”
She has no immediate plan to leave the land of straight lines
and Ordnung, but, she says, things could always change. “My
approach to the future is a bit like how I work on my tattoos.
I start drawing without having a perfect idea how I’d like it to
look in the end, then halfway through I might start thinking
it needs a bit more yellow here or a few more leaves. I like to
leave it open. With my life, it’s the same.” n
EXBERLINER 170