Skin deep
Achsah Seyoum

What do we call beautiful, and who gets to decide?

Achsah Seyoum traces the line between pain and beauty. What began with a fascination for tattoos evolved into an investigation of scarification, the deliberate cutting or branding of the skin to create permanent body marks that signify rites of passage, group identity, or spiritual and aesthetic meaning.

For Achsah, these marks carry histories erased by colonial judgment. She encountered a research paper on European missionaries in African indigenous societies who dismissed scarification as “bad practice,” contributing to long-lasting stigma and the abandonment of these traditions in many communities. In response she looked at places where the practice persists today such as Suri of Ethiopia, Batammariba of Togo/Benin and Sepik River in Papua New Guinea.

Achsah translates these discoveries onto canvas and silkscreens. She transfers the silhouettes of scarred portraits onto canvas then surrounds them with repeated patterns drawn directly from the scar designs. A soft pastel palette tempers the intensity of the rough textures.

If the works make you uneasy, that reaction is part of the conversation. Her work asks you to confront where your ideas about beauty, harm, and self-expression originate. Scarification was branded as primitive yet in many societies it was and remains a serious practice of self-resistance and cultural affirmation. It speaks to resilience as much as to beauty. In Achsah’s hands it becomes a question: who decides what we call beautiful? Who would scar themselves for beauty and what do we miss when we dismiss what lies beneath the surface?