Translated material
Girl with tattoo z z
Ten years ago, Petersburger Kite Komel filled the letter N on his hand in memory of the imaginary friend of childhood. The peculiarity of the tattoo is that at a certain angle it looks like Z is a symbol that has been used since February to support hostilities in Ukraine.
Kite told the “paper” how people are now reacting to her tattoo and whether she plans to reduce the drawing.
Kite Comel
designer
- I filled the tattoo in 2012. At that time I was 14 years old. This is the letter N, if you look from my point of view. But when I lower my hand down, it looks like Z.
As a child and early adolescence, I had problems with friendly relations, but with imagination everything was fine. I came up with imaginary friends who helped me get a lack of communication. Subsequently, I decided to make a tattoo with the first letter of the name of one of them - as a sign that I was able to go through my first crisis.
When letters Z began to appear on the streets of St. Petersburg, I felt uneasy. After a week of the war, a banner appeared at my metro station. Together with terrible stress about bombing and deaths, I received a small derealization.
It seemed to me that this is the “attack of the universe” against me personally or that I was in some book or game, where the plot was originally registered around me. After all, in addition to this on February 24, I had an important personal date.
I have a video in Tiktok, which I shot and posted before the war. There I show my room, and on my hand - close to the camera - a tattoo is clearly visible, turning like Z. As soon as I found the first comments like “It’s immediately clear that the patriot!”, I wrote and fixed the comment that I did not support aggression on Ukraine and that this video was done before the war, and the tattoo - for a long time before.
On the street in Russia, no one has seen my tattoo after the 24th: it was cold there, and it [the letter N] is on the forearm. Now I am in Georgia, and here is warm. So when I leave the house, I just finish N to the square with acrylic.
Now I feel calm about my tattoo. I am going to hide it for several years, because I do not want people to trigger. I do not need other people's flashbacks with tanks in peaceful cities.
I'm not going to interrupt the tattoo for several reasons:
- She means a lot to me, and she is directly connected with who I am now.
- I do not think that the letter Z can be closed as a swastika sign. Nevertheless, this letter is in many alphabets and it will be used further.
- Let’s say, I will tear off the fifth point if I change something in my body because of the government against which I opposed my whole conscious life. If tomorrow Putin makes my face a fascist symbol - should I do plastic?
I was offered both Tiktok and Instagram - and just my friends [in personal communication] - many different interesting options, what to do with a tattoo. For example, finish to “No War” or “Navalny”. But despite my support from Alexei and his team (spelling author is preserved - approx. “Papers” ), I am not ready to give them a hand to the campaign.
Perhaps I am seriously ready to consider only one proposed option - the point, as [when writing] “9” and “6”, which is placed nearby to indicate the turn of the sign.
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