Yoruba

On YokoFolio, pick the style Yoruba and then your city, and widen the radius a lot: very few artists practice it. Look for someone who distinguishes ornament from identity marks — that's the essential dividing line in this tradition. If you have no connection to Yoruba culture, ask people who do rather than symbol websites, which simplify a great deal and often get it wrong.

It depends entirely on what you're taking from it, and the distinction is sharp. Ornament spoke of beauty and of belonging to a milieu: it lends itself to a broad reading. Lineage marks, though, named a specific family and a specific town — they assert something verifiable about the person wearing them, and they aren't worn as a decorative design. In every case, a tattoo inspired by this vocabulary takes the forms, but neither the technique nor the standing.

Àṣẹ (often written ashe) is one of the central concepts in Yoruba thought: the force that makes things come to pass, the power of realization present in beings, in words and in objects. It's also said at the end of a prayer, a little like “so be it.” It's a living religious and philosophical notion, not a slogan: if you're thinking of wearing it, talk it through with people from that tradition before you decide.

The most open motifs come from textile and ornament: adire patterns, made of resists and indigo dyeing, dotted fields, chevrons, parallel lines, mask motifs. Symbols tied directly to the orishas — Shango, Yemoja, Ogun — belong to a living religious system, and facial marks to a family one. The question to ask isn't whether it looks good but whether it's yours to wear, and that question goes to the people concerned.