Jellyfish

Narrative by Cristina Voto, Posted January 18, 2026

Image courtesy of the author

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.

The tattoo I chose (for this series) is a jellyfish and it refuses to behave like a confession. It does not explain me: it diffracts me.

Ink on skin behaves like an archive of decisions, hesitations, desires. The jellyfish arrived as I was unlearning the idea of a stable, legible self. I am a water sign. Then I realised that water does not care about clichés. It seeps, floods, evaporates, returns. It claims shape through contact, not essence. The jellyfish became the figure of that insight: a body that carries its own opacity, a floating algorithm of survival.

I was learning to understand weight, but weight meant more than flesh. Weight was obligation, inherited narratives, expectations that clung like sediment. I was dissolving the gravity of other people’s gaze, the stories already written about my presence. Like jellyfish that absorb toxins from the sea, I had been absorbing projections, demands, fantasies, until I could not tell where they ended and I began. The tattoo marked a shift: permeability as practice, not obligation; chosen porosity, not a permanent leak.

Jellyfish anatomy is a manifesto in disguise. No heart, no brain, no skeleton. Still: pulsation and persistence, a diffuse intelligence running through the body at once. I recognised a queer mode of existence in that structure: not a single centre, not a single truth, not a single axis of desire — a choreography instead of a blueprint.

Some jellyfish regenerate, rewind their life cycle, become many from one, split and return. Their reproduction unsettles the linear story of origins and futures. The jellyfish came to stand for queer temporality: loops, regressions, rehearsals, continuities that refuse to be straightened.

Over time, the tattoo has become a technology of orientation. It reminds me that being read correctly is not the goal. A jellyfish remains partially invisible even when lit. It is there, but it slips from capture: the right to remain indeterminate, to glow without explaining the source of the light.

I carry this creature as method, a stinging statement on my skin: I move with the tide, I metabolise poison, I keep my transparency and my danger together.

Tags: Tattoo You

Cristina Voto is an Assistant Professor at the University of Turin. She is a member of the doctoral boards for the Design and Creation program at Universidad de Caldas, Colombia, and the Arts and Techno-aesthetics program at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina. She currently serves as Vice President of the Latin American Federation of Semiotics. She has collaborated with numerous universities and artistic institutions, including Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, University of the West of England, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, and the Festival de la Imagen. Her research focuses on visual semiotics and digital arts, particularly at the intersection of gender studies and the philosophies of technology. She has published extensively on these topics—articles, edited volumes, and the monograph 'Monstruos Audiovisuales. Agentividad, movimiento y morfología' (Aracne, 2021).

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