“Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, caution.”― Erin McCarthy, The Pregnancy Test.
The idea started very spontaneously but when applied, it was life altering.
When Brazilian tattoo artist Flavia Carvalho was one day hunched over the body of a woman, inking her skin with an image far prettier than her scar-riddled abdomen, she asked the woman what had happened.
“She told me that she was at a nightclub, and when she turned down a man who approached her, he stabbed her with an switchblade,” Carvalho told The Huffington Post.
Deeply moved by the woman’s story 30-year-old Carvalho was inspired.
“I was suddenly struck by the idea of providing free tattoos to women who were left with scars following domestic violence or mastectomies,” explains Carvalho.
It was there that project A Pele da Flor (The Skin of the Flower) was born. The name also is a reference to a Portuguese expression, ‘A flor da pele’, or ‘Deeper than skin’.
“Each tattoo would act as an instrument for empowerment and a self-esteem booster,” said Carvalho, who runs the project alone “since no other tattoo artist has expressed interest in participating.”
Through her work Carvalho, who actually began as a tattoo assistant after studying Biological Sciences at the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, has also acted as some what of a councillor for many of her subjects. Her time with them in the tattoo chair is a cathartic experience for women to talk through how they survived horrifically abusive relationships.
“They all move me,” Carvalho told the Huffington Post. “The one that shocked me the most was the story of a 17 year-old girl who dated an older man and, for months, suffered from the physically abusive relationship. When he wanted to break up with her, he scheduled a meeting, and after they began to fight, he stabbed her several times in her abdomen, and violently raped her. She ended up with a perineum tear, had to undergo a number of surgeries and spent several days in the ICU. She is so young, and she has been left with so many scars. The aggressor, however, was a first time offender, so he is still out on the streets.”
Recently Carvalho’s voluntary service received some much needed funding from people who have seen what she is doing on news sites or social media and her work with domestic violence survivors has been commended by the Municipal Secretariat of Policies for Women. But Carvalho calls what she is doing “a grain of sand” in what is a much wider issue.
“The world is full of things that need to be addressed,” said Carvalho. “We have a long way to go regarding protecting women against violence.”
But we feel the future is safer with women like Flavia Carvalho in our corner, right?
Bravo Flavia, bravo!
Artist Flavia Carvalho has been giving free tattoos to domestic abuse victims and the results are life changing.
