Artist Profile: Daniel Tucci
He's one of the biggest, most prolific tattoo artists in Rio de Janeiro. His art is etched on the skin of celebrities like Lady Gaga, Cara Delevingne, and Ricky Martin (Opa!) amongst others. But there's more to Daniel Tucci's creative journey than meets the eye. After all, as Skunk Anansie once declared - an artist is an artist is an artist.
As well as being a tattoo artist for 30 years, the 52-year-old Brazilian has always dabbled in contemporary art. Tucci has experimented with many mediums over the decades, including painting, collage, sculpture, and photography, which caught the attention of gallerists and collectors in Rio de Janeiro, earning him participations in two editions of ArtRio, the city's main contemporary art fair.
Represented by prominent gallery Artur Fidalgo - which has been in operation in Rio since 2000, with Artur Fidalgo himself being in the traditional art scene since 1987 - Tucci has been straddling both worlds, investing in his commercial success as a tattoo artist while trying to find his path in the fine arts.
Over the years, he has never stopped creating. His artworks, usually commissioned, grace the homes of several private collectors in Brazil and there is always a new piece in the pipeline. But Tucci is one of many contemporary artists in Brazil and elsewhere in the world for whom the art circuit has been challenging in recent years, with sales slowing down and no clear route to make their work truly noticed.
Driven by the desire to explore different ways to present and sell his work, in 2024 Tucci accepted my invitation to join the Rio Art Residency and be onboarded to the NFT art scene. His genesis digital pieces, created during the residency programme, were acquired by prominent collectors such as Blondie23LMD, batsoupyum, redbeardnft, WAPSHOP_ETH, funghibull, Sendrock, and @toadswiback amongst others.
Being in the programme inspired Tucci to continue to take steps to become a fully-fledged NFT artist and a few months after the end of the residency, he started working on a new project close to his heart.
A thoughtful and methodic artist, It took Tucci close to a year to develop the concept and create the pieces that form part of his newly released 'Matter & Spirit' collection.
He spent months collecting the right leaves, bark and vine of the different plants which form part of the recipe of the ayahuasca tea, extracting pigments from them and working to create physical engravings with the pigments and leaves, as well as digital animations with leaves that aim to reproduce the kaleidoscopic visions usually experienced with the ayahuasca.
As a spiritual person, as he puts it himself, Tucci is drawn to themes of life and death, vitality and decay, and the expansion of the mind, with skulls being a feature of a sizeable portion of his work.
Since 2014, he's been a regular at ayahuasca tea ceremonies which he believes have been healing, contributed to his growth as a person, and added perspective to his existence, bringing down walls between the real world and the mind:
"It's only once you start really getting into this habit consistently, with respect for yourself and the power of the ayahuasca and how it can dissolve the barriers between minds, people, the physical and the intangible, that you realise the world is whole, life is whole and there is a way to experience it without the constraints we tend to put there ourselves," says Tucci.
"I decided to develop this whole body of creations inspired by this journey, so I could communicate in the way that I know how to what it's like to have these moments of clarity and openness of mind," he added.
To symbolise his desire to explore the possibilities of NFT art, Tucci also created a digital hand-drawn animation, 'The Jiboia Snake And The Return To The Whole' for this collection. All animations have original soundtracks that refer back to nature, which Tucci believes help to fully immerse the observer into the experience of the tea ceremonies.
For now, Tucci still lives the glamour of tattooing celebrities for his day job. Oh, did I also mention he co-owns one of the coolest bars in one the coolest neighbourhoods in Rio? Well, he does - Bar Culto is a buzzing social and cultural spot and a feature of Rio night life. But there seems to be no doubt of where his heart is - he is an artist, first and foremost, and it shows.
Is Tucci fully committed to growing his practice of digital art? Will we all be seeing more of him in this space? I think the answer is yes.
Tucci's Matter & Spirit collection was released on @SuperRare on January 8.
