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. In the portfolio, look for parallel lines that stay evenly spaced, adire patterns whose repeats line up, and masks or orisha symbols drawn with care rather than pasted from a template; healed photos show whether tight patterns stayed open. Ask the artist where each motif comes from, and whether there's one they would advise you against. 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 where the motif comes from, and the distinction is sharp. The most open motifs come from textile and ornament: adire patterns, made of resists and indigo dyeing, dotted fields, chevrons, parallel lines, mask motifs; ornament spoke of beauty and of belonging to a milieu, and it lends itself to a broad reading. Symbols tied directly to the orishas — Shango, Yemoja, Ogun — belong to a living religious system. Lineage marks 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. 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.

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.” The word traveled with the Yoruba diaspora into the religions of the Americas, where it's also written axé or aché. 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. If you get it as a word, have the spelling and the accents checked by someone who speaks Yoruba.

Berber work is made of small, separate geometric signs — diamonds, chevrons, crosses, columns of dots — placed at precise points on the face, the hands or the ankles, with bare skin all around; each sign stands on its own, in thin dark lines. Yoruba work builds pattern rather than single signs: repeats taken from adire cloth, groups of short parallel lines that echo the old facial marks, dotted fields, and figurative elements such as Gelede masks or orisha symbols. Both use chevrons and dots, so look at the arrangement: small signs set one by one point to Berber; a field that repeats like a textile points to Yoruba. If the design repeats like a cloth pattern, echoes the parallel lines of facial marks, or brings in a mask or an orisha symbol, it's Yoruba.