Durga

Hand-tapping and machine tattooing (Indonesian tribal idioms)

Durga Tattoo, Sleman, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Durga, recorded in scholarship as Aman Durga Sipatiti, is an Indonesian tattooer based in the Yogyakarta area who works in both machine tattooing and hand-tapping. He is a documented leading catalyst of the Mentawai Tattoo Revival, which he began in 2009 with the filmmaker Rahung Nasution.

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Archive Note

Durga grew up in Jakarta and studied design and visual communication in Yogyakarta at the Institut Seni Indonesia, then learned to tattoo while living in Los Angeles, where he apprenticed under the Samoan-tradition master Su'a Sulu'ape Freewind. He returned to Indonesia and established Durga Tattoo, which ran in Jakarta from around 2009, moved to Yogyakarta in 2014, operated from Berlin between roughly 2016 and 2022, and then returned to the Yogyakarta area. Since 2009, with Rahung Nasution, he has documented and worked to sustain Mentawai tattooing through workshops in Siberut and direct collaboration with Mentawai community members, and the tattoo anthropologist Lars Krutak has profiled him, including in the World Atlas of Tattoo, calling him the leading figure of the Indonesian new wave.

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