About me
hi! My name is Alika. I'm from Serbia and I'm 18 years old. My room is my fortress and my workshop. Other girls have posters of actors on their walls; I have sketches plastered over every free space: intricate geometric patterns I dreamed up at night, realistic roses that need to look alive, ancient dragons in old-school style. On my shelves—not makeup and trinkets, but pots of ink, sheets of practice skin, and dozens, hundreds of sharpened pencils. My hands are always stained with ink; under my nails, a faint, almost erasable blackness. My secret sign. My second skin.
Turn On
But I have a second dream. It doesn't live within these four walls, but in a big, old atlas I bought at a flea market. Its pages are worn thin from my constant turning.
I don't just want to do tattoos. I want to travel. I imagine it so clearly I can almost smell the scent of foreign cities on my skin.
Turn Off
I see myself in a small studio somewhere in Berlin. Rain is falling outside, and my machine is buzzing inside. I'm lining a line from a verse by a client's favorite German poet on their forearm. They tell me its story in broken English, and I weave it into every single stroke.