Semioticians analyze symbols, so for this series, we’ve asked 25 of our semio colleagues from around the world to explicate the symbolism of… one of their own tattoos.

While many tattoos are born from impulse, the branching coral on my forearm is different. It wasn’t sketched in a notebook or chosen on an instinct; it was an object of my doctoral research in biosemiotics, a piece of my academic soul made visible.

The tattoo’s story began with a void. As I was completing the sleeve on my left arm, a stubborn, V-shaped gap persisted between two older pieces. For weeks, it was a missing puzzle piece, a question mark on my skin. The answer came to me as I told my tattoo artist the story of coral, the focus of my studies on Charles Darwin. The shape was unmistakable, echoing a figure I’d spent countless hours analyzing: Darwin’s first evolutionary sketch from 1837. He didn’t call it a tree; he called it the “coral of life.”

Darwin argued that the tree, with its hierarchical structure of roots and trunk, was a flawed metaphor for life. He favored the coral, a sprawling, chaotic structure that builds upon the skeletons of its dead predecessors. In a coral reef, there is no single origin point, no trunk more vital than its branches. Life and death are intertwined, and every part contributes equally to the whole.

This concept became the perfect emblem for my own academic obsession: the hybrid, the being that blurs the line between the organic and the inorganic. The coral, now permanently etched on my arm, is a constant reminder that the body hosting it is itself such a hybrid. It is a living testament to the fusion of life and death, of organic cells and inorganic ink, of soft skin and the cold, precise machine that put the art there. It reminds me that we are all complex structures, growing on the foundations of what came before, with no single part more important than the whole.

TATTOO YOU: Nicola Zengiaro (Italy) on CORAL OF LIFE | Su Luo (Taiwan) on ISLAND & TREE | Thierry Mortier (Sweden) on LIJFSPREUKEN | Cristina Voto (Italy) on JELLYFISH | Charles Leech (Canada) on SURF WAVES | Mariane Cara (Brazil) on BECOMING’S TRIAD | Chris Martin (Canada) on PUNK ROCK HEART | Angie Meltsner (USA) on ENJOY EVERY SANDWICH | Samuel Grange (France) on POLYMORPHOUS | Inka Crosswaite (Germany) on LAYERED FRAGMENT | Al Deakin (England) on FAMILY STAR | Hibato Ben Ahmed (France) on HENNA HAND | Max Matus (Mexico) on KALINGA REDOX | Whitney Dunlap Fowler (USA) on IN THE UNTETHERED | Chirag Mediratta (India) on PHOENIX & BUTTERFLY | Alexandra Ncube (England) on LIMINAL ROOTS | Josh Glenn (USA) on FALLING ANGEL | Aarushi Chadha (India) on PART-TIME PEOPLE PERSON | Serdar Paktin (Turkey/UK) on RESISTANCE & SURRENDER | Tatiana Jaramillo (Colombia/Italy) on EMBERÁ BLACKOUT | Antje Weißenborn (Germany) on FADED STAR | Sundari Sheldon (USA) on SUN | Roberta Graham (England) on SUNFLOWER/GUNMETAL | TBD (TBD) on TBD | TBD (TBD) on TBD.

Also see these global semio series: MAKING SENSE (Q&As) | SEMIOFEST SESSIONS (monthly mini-conferences) | COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | COLOR CODEX | DECODER (fictional semioticians) | CASE FILE | PHOTO OP | MEDIA DIET | TATTOO YOU (semioticians’ tattoos).