'CHRYSALIS' / Samuel Eidelson & Sonj
Tattooing is an exchange. A process of trust. We create space for new layers of self perception and learn to embrace the splitting of the Chrysalis, the slow unfolding of the wings.
The latest work from Naarm based filmmaker Samuel Eidelson and tattoo artist Sonj, CHRYSALIS is an examination of the intimate bond of trust between the one marking and the one being marked.
The film documents Sonj in the creation of a new work on skin and the crucial collaboration of the person on whose skin the work will be made (Jazz Jones).
Capturing the ephemera of a moment passing, the distorted images and imperfect camera work betray both the vulnerabilities of those on screen as well as the often compromising gaze of the artist behind the camera.
Accompanied by an original score both familiar and alienating, CHRYSALIS celebrates the joy, insecurity and empowerment of our constant becoming in an age old ritual that is, as always, meaningful as we choose it to be.
Tattoo and artworks created by Sonj
Featuring Jazz Jones
Visuals and Score by Samuel Eidelson
Words by Samuel Eidelson
Thank you for reading this article. Before you leave the page, we’d like you to take a moment to read this statement. We are asking our readers to take action and stand with the BIPOC community who fight and endure the oppression and injustice of racial inequality.
Here in ‘Australia’, Indigenous people are the most incarcerated population on Earth. Countless lives have been murdered by white police, white government policies and this country’s white history, institutionalised colonialism and ongoing racial oppression. Racial injustice continues today under the phoney, self-congratulatory politics of ‘Reconciliation’ and the notion that colonialism is something that must be denied and forgotten, an uncomfortable artefact of the past.
Feeling guilty is not enough. We must take action, pay the rent, educate ourselves and acknowledge that empathy and sorrow for past actions is insufficient if this does nothing to prevent our current reality from extending into the future.
Please consider making donations to the following organisations (the list is so small and the work to be done is so large, do your research to find more grassroots, Indigenous-lead community organisations):
Indigenous Social Justice Association - fighting to stop Indigenous deaths in custody
Firesticks Alliance - who campaign for Indigenous land management, cultural burning and looking after Country