Graphic Tribe Tattoos

Profile

Dali Rău —the tattoo artist, designer, webmeister and tribal chief of the Graphic Tribe— doesn’t really like talking about himself in the third person, so here’s the

Self–Introduction

I was born in 1973 in Bucureşti, the capital city of România and moved to Tokyo, Japan in December 1996. Been here ever since.

I’ve been drawing since I was 2 or 3 years old, I’ve been tattooing since 1993 and the first time I ever touched a computer was sometime in 2000 (it was a Macintosh box but I can’t really remember what OS because at the time I had no idea what an operating system was), right after the release of “The Matrix” in Japan.

I’m ambidextrous, I speak Română, English and 日本語 more or less fluently, I’m married —to a Japanese woman and to my work— and I seem to be “a nice guy”.

Loves

• Black and gray tattoos, portraits and biomechanic structures, realistic designs and, generally, putting the gloves on and tattooing, as well plain old drawing with a pencil on paper.
• Web design —as long as I do it for myself or I don’t have to put up with the piece of shit also known as “Internet Explorer”.
• Open source software and every. little. single. piece of news or rumor that says the hyenas (Mi¢ro$oft, Appl€, Adob€, ¥ahoo) lost another bit of market share to open source rebels like Firefox, Thunderbird, the GIMP, Inkscape and the likes. Well-written Mac software like the ACP, CLIX, Clipothèque, BBEdit, GarageBand, Shade and Acquisition.
• Rebels, anti-war protesters, courageous people, inquisitive spirits, hackers, anarchists, atheists, agnostics and satanists, polyglots and open-minded people. And partying with them :)
• Absynthe, tobacco, well-done beef steaks and chocolate… and pretty much everything else that’s either on the doctor’s black list or in the christian “no-no” laws.
• The KLM and everything-Amsterdam; Slayer, Slipknot, Koᴙn, The Prodigy and Combichrist, Quaff, Tool, cocksucking motherfucking outright explicit lyrics; the first Matrix, Star Wars, Dark City and Blade…
• Bittorrent :D
• Women!

Hates

• The christian hypocrisy —the hypocrisy of the religious Reich called “church”— and pretty much any religion, for that matter. Monotheist religions are the root of all evil on Earth. “God” is just a bedtime story for idiots.
• Television, radio, newspapers. The so-called “mainstream” mass-media as a whole.
• The very existence of governments. War and warmongers, racist fucks and xenophobes, egocentric people, mercenaries and people who can’t overcome their preconceived ideas. The obedience and cowardice of all people, allowing foreign military presence on the teritory of their countries.
• All the Japanese landlords who refused to let me rent a space simply because I’m a “tattooist”.
• Adob€, App£€, Mi¢ro$oft and their fanboys.
• The Pavlov effect used in Japanese commercials.
• The RIAA, Jasrac, their families, pets and friends.
• Censorship, “no smoking” signs, the hypocritical use of “clean version” instead of “censored” on MTV, copy-protected CDs, copy-protected MP3s, the moron who invented the bleep technology and all the morons and moronettes who use it to ruin movies and songs; the very existence of terminology like “objectionable word” or “politically (in)correct”. Taxes and bank fees, laws that say some of Michelangelo’s or Da Vinci’s works might be interpreted as obscene, because you can see tits, clits and cocks and —if I think about it— anything that’s an attempt to impose a certain belief/point of view by using political, financial or military power.
• Talking monkeys and meat puppets. Spammers and Windows zombies.
• Earthquakes at 4:00 AM. Snow. Raw fish. Japanese tea.
• Realizing that my “hates” list is longer than my “loves” one…

Résumé

Studies

• 1987–1990 • sculpture and artistic design —graphics section— at the ”Nicolae Tonitza” Art School, in Bucureşti;
• 1989–1991 • basic business management at The College for Economic Studies No. 9, in Bucureşti;
• 1990–1992 • commercial illustration —advertising, ambient design and interior decorations section— at The College for Decorative Arts No. 43, in Bucureşti.

Other Activities

• 1990–1992 • various jobs as window dresser, interior decorator, clothing designer;
• 1992–1993 • slavery, also known as “military service”…

Tattooing

• 1993–1996 • Body Design ’69 Tattoo Studio, in Bucureşti;
• 1996–2002 • Tattoo Art Maruyama, in Shibuya and later on, in Meguro, Tokyo;
• March 2002, Graphic Tribe Tattoos is officially open…

Portfolio

Tattooing

• Current Photo Gallery • black and gray
• Photo Archives • mostly multicoloured

Web Design

• The Graphic Tribe Blog
• Graphic Tribe Tattoos (current site)
• The Graphic Tribe Blog (Japanese version)
• Graphic Tribe Tattoos (Japanese version)
• Graphic Tribe Tattoos Photo Archives
• The Matrix Community (matrixcommunity.org & thematrixcommunity.com) — currently offline
• The Matrix Community Gallery (zionresistance.net/gallery) — currently offline
• The Matrix Community Rebel Radio (zionresistance.net/radio) — currently offline
• The Matrix Community Member Websites (zionmainframe.org) — currently offline
• Sexy Corsets by Iuliana — versions up to January 30^th 2010
• TribalXML NameSpace and Graphic Tribe XMDP

Graphic Design

• Application icons for Clipothèque, Xfile, Xfind, Xscan, BBC, Catinfo, GDE, Outbox, RxDefaults and a matrixy easter egg for CLIX
• A couple of logos for “NATICO”, “Triple Ace Club”, “Baran” and “b&d International”
• The album cover, lyrics sheet and CD graphics for Diabolos Radio’s 2008 release, “Still Japan Needs a Hero”

I guess that’s about it; I’m not looking to get hired so a summary résumé [sic!] should do :) But if —for any reason— you want to know more, just send me an e-mail and ask me about it. I’m a friendly dude and, as they say, I’m quite “a nice guy” ;)