Sign up for the Independent Women email for the latest news, opinion and featuresGet the Independent Women email for freeGet the Independent Women email for freeHarriet Richardson is not an angry person. Except, it seems, when it comes to art. “You could draw a line through most of my projects and find them founded in anger. Revenge. Fury.”It was during her first Edinburgh Fringe that her newest idea blossomed. “I don’t know if you know much about the comedy circuit…” The 30-year-old asks, squinting her eyes at me. Male comedians? I’ve only ever heard wonderful things.She nods and lets out a weary breath. “I have genuinely started to believe that God put them on the earth to annoy ideas out of me.” Ideas like her 2023 performance art piece, in which Richardson spent Valentine’s Day conducting 100 online speed dates with 100 people, including total strangers, close friends, and exes. The dates were livestreamed, so anyone could observe the awkward pauses and the flirting. Even then, she was interested in the art of endurance. While each person had a five-minute slot, Harriet sat at her laptop for 16 hours. In Edinburgh, she started to think about the ‘Madonna-Whore’ complex: the distinction made between women who are seen as disposable versus women who are supposed to be revered and respected. What if the two opposites were combined? What if, in fact, they were brought intimately together? Harriet selected her own body to represent the former group. And for the latter… what better symbol than that of the mother?The concept for ‘Temporary’ came from this dichotomy. Richardson would get a tattoo of the names of her 14 ex-lovers’ mothers, all the way from her first teenage boyfriend to her most recent (and most grown-up) break-up. “I was very conscious not to use men’s names,” Harriet explains. “The people that are, arguably, more important to me than the men – are the women who raised them.”open image in galleryTattoo artist David Walker, who works in Liverpool, helped bring Harriet’s vision to life (Harriet Richardson)Finding the names of her ex’s mothers was no simple task. For 12 of them, Richardson could rely on memory, her own diaries, or Facebook accounts – publicly available information which no one thinks twice about displaying on social media. (Until, perhaps, your ex-lover decides to get it tattooed on their body.)One man who’d ghosted her before a date later told her over the phone that he’d done so because of his dad’s birthday. With the work for ‘Temporary’ already underway, Harriet asked him for a reminder of his dad’s name. And then, just out of interest: What was your mum’s name again? “As soon as he said it, I went and wrote the name down in, like, 10 places.” Richardson didn’t tell any of her exes what she was up to: that, she says, would have felt like asking permission. “It’s an act of self, not a collaboration.”Some required more painstaking research. To track down the names of two mothers of men whom she’d had fleeting encounters with, Richardson hired a private investigator, who assured her he would use only legal, above-the-board methods.“It’s open access information and free will. It’s not invasive. You can’t say it’s unethical. Or at least, it’s no more unethical than having sex with me and then not speaking to me again.” Once the names were found, fact-checked, and organised, Richardson went to David Walker, a tattoo artist in Liverpool, along with Emily Lomas, who filmed and photographed the process. A few hours later, the deed was totally, irreversibly done.open image in galleryThe tattoo is Richardson’s first and, she swears, her last (Emily Lomas)But it would be another six months before Harriet showed the tattoo to the world. She loved the idea of it being just for her. “I was a bit hesitant. But somewhere along the way, I thought no, I’m really proud of it.”“And it is for me. That’s the full stop. I’ve believed that since I came up with the idea, and since I got it done.”Harriet is not sure if any of the mothers have seen the tattoo, but she does know that one of their sons has. After posting ‘Temporary’ on Instagram on 20 October, one ex-lover reacted to her story with a ‘clapping’ emoji. When she asked if he had any other comments, he mutely sent a smiley face. “An emoji.” She loves it. “The fact that it can’t even be written in, like, pen and ink. It’s so symbolic of that relationship.”It’s no coincidence that Richardson got this particular tattoo during her newfound and painfully realised celibacy. “Every single addiction I’ve ever had is a moderation one,” Harriet says from her London flat, a statue of a naked woman’s torso sitting demurely behind her. “You can’t live without food, so you have to find a way to have a healthy relationship with it. It’s the same with people. You can’t just not see another human ever again.”And after years of painful relationships with what she describes as ‘dismissive-avoidant’ men, Richardson was in the market for a self-policing strategy. The tattoo is long-term, not just in its existence, but in the artist’s dedication to maintaining it.Harriet describes her vision to me: any potential new partner will be asked for their mother’s name upfront, and have the tattoo explained. If they go on to spend the night together, she will go to the nearest tattoo parlour the next morning and get the name added.“It’s a hard boundary that I now have to exercise. It means they see the real me very quickly – they can’t have sex with me unless they know me. That’s a novelty. I’ve had full relationships with men who never got to know any parts of me that were worth knowing.”It’s a good measure, the artist muses, of which people to let into her life. If they have a problem with the tattoo, then how likely is a sustainable relationship? “This piece will change who I sleep with. That’s the point of it. I have a sex and love addiction problem. I don’t want frivolous encounters that don’t care about me.”open image in gallery”There’s some really cool names on there. What a joy to find out Maureen was going to be tattooed on me.” (Emily Lomas)Public reaction to the tattoo has been volatile. Some love it, while in others it seems to inspire passionate revulsion. She has been accused of being anti-feminist, self-hating, and attention-seeking. Those who dislike it are disturbed by the concept of a young woman marking her body permanently based on the men she’s had sex with, and choosing to continue the ritual throughout the rest of her life. However, Harriet has noticed that people’s feelings seem to change with time. One comment called the work disgusting, only to return a day later and confess that they actually quite liked it. In response to the claims of anti-feminism, Harriet keeps it short. “I feel like I’m taking control and power back. I don’t really have much else to say apart from: it was my choice. There’s nothing more feminist than a woman making a choice about her own body.”Especially illuminating is the discourse about the number. Under every comment which says 14 is far too many or too few people to have slept with by the age of 30, there will be a reply underneath, earnestly explaining that they thought the opposite. Richardson finds it comforting. “If 20,000 people think I’m a slut and 20,000 people think I’m a virgin, it must mean I’m somewhere in the middle, which is a person.”Six months down the line, she loves the list of mothers, Harriet says, and finds the whole thing funnier than she had expected. “I have moments, like when I’m in the shower and imagine us all squished in there together, or on the treadmill and it’s all of us running, each mother complaining about being dragged along for the ride. I like that none of them chose to be connected, or for me to be connected to the rest of them— but now they are. I think it’s quite nice that we share something in common.”The reaction Harriet was most scared of was of her own mother. Her parents were always strict and conservative, “which, by the way, explains absolutely everything,” and tattoos were an obvious no-go. Her mum’s reaction was straightforward: ‘You’re 30, it’s your body, you can do what you want. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to look at it, please don’t tell me.’Though the tattoo is, by design, never truly finished, Harriet finds satisfaction in imagining a metaphorical line under the list as it currently stands. “[The men] all have something in common, and it’s not necessarily something I want to entertain again. I didn’t have to put 19-year-old Harriet through all of that, but I obviously did, in a way, to become who I am today. I regret some of the relationships. But I just know I’ll never regret that tattoo. It’s so cool.”open image in galleryThe full list of names: Vicky, Dawn, Linda, Diane, Maureen, Susan, Hazel, Fran, Julie, Lucie, Gillian, Heather, Irene, Angela (Harriet Richardson)It’s a wider symbolism which characterises the piece for Harriet. “It feels like I’m closing a chapter, not just on ‘straight white man who’s in control of me’, but on ‘straight’ and ‘white’ and ‘man’, individually, as concepts.” It ties into questions she’s been wrestling privately about sexuality, what sex means to her, and who she’s attracted to.And what about the anger which fuelled the concept in the first place? Harriet no longer feels it. Her projects, though founded in provocation, are always the motor by which she processes things. “I forgive a lot of the people on the list, I forgive the people from Fringe, and in short, I’m over it. I’m not angry anymore.” She laughs. “I’m sure I’ll find something else to be angry about soon.”
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Harriet Richardson: Why I’ve had the mothers names of all my ex-lovers tattooed on my torso
