How about a poke in the eye?

American body-modification artist Luna Cobra invented “eyeball tattooing” in 2007. In a procedure he has performed on hundreds of clients, he colours the white of the eye by injecting pigment.

Cobra got the idea while attending a body-art convention with his colleague Shannon Larratt, who in self-portraits had digitally made the whites of his eyes blue.

Larratt was a fan of “Dune”, the celebrated science-fiction novel by Frank Herbert, and wanted to resemble the Fremen, the residents of the desert planet Arrakis, whose eyeballs were all blue.

“I asked Shannon if he’d be interested in making his own eyes permanently blue if I figured out a way,” Cobra says. “He laughed and said, ‘Only if two other people try it with me.’”

Cobra recruited two other friends and, after intensive research, performed the first “eyeball tattooing”. A few months later, he says, the TV series “CSI: New York” had an episode based on the procedure, “and the rest is history”.

The procedure, which takes just a few minutes, is as simple as it is perilous – and as apparently painful.

The white of the eyeball, known as the sclera, is “tattooed with a solid colour or mix of colours” using the “hand-poking” procedure in which an ink-laden needle is poked into the skin.

Using a hypodermic syringe, the ink is “placed safely” in a super-thin layer of the sclera, between its mucous-covered outer membrane and the hard inner white of the eye, Cobra says. He’s since “streamlined” the procedure with better technique and materials.

Cobra got his first tattoo at age 15 after seeing the body art and tattoos in photos of indigenous tribes in National Geographic magazine. He offers piercing and tattooing services and surgical body modifications like putting points on ears, splitting tongues, implanting horns and scarring the skin in patterns.

Since inventing eyeball tattoos in 2007, he says, there has never been a complication with his clients. There are, however, reports of such procedures going wrong, including loss of eyesight at the hands of novice tattoo artists.

Cobra blames this on “people with very limited basic education, who see this just as a cool thing to do and do not care about their bodies”.

“In a way I am responsible – it was my invention – but I’ve always told people never to do this,” says Cobra, who recently moved from Paris to Melbourne, Australia, to start a new studio.

“It’s sad for me because it’s something I created to use as an art for people to express themselves so they can feel comfortable with their body and their place in the world.”

In February the government of New South Wales, where Melbourne is located, effectively legalised the eyeball tattoo by defining it as a “skin-penetration procedure”. The state wanted to regulate the practice so it will be performed in a clean and safe environment.

“Eyeball tattooing involves much the same risk of transmission of blood-borne viruses as other forms of tattooing, which is why we moved to tighten the regulations,” says Health Minister Jillian Skinner.

But Luke Arundel, a Melbourne-based optometrist, says the practice is “painfully dangerous”. “Cobra might have had a good record so far, but at the end of the day it’s the eyes – the most sensitive organ of our body. “Sticking things into an eye is a very risky business, no matter how safe you are. There is very little margin for error,” Arundel says. The ink dye has to be injected into a membrane less than half a millimetre thick.

“It’s a sight-threatening procedure that could lead to severe infection, retinal detachment and other problems.” There’s a chance of chronic headaches, ulceration around the area of penetration and severe sensitivity to light. “Also, there is no guarantee that it will not develop complications later in life.”

Thirty-year-old Kylie Lee Garth had Cobra tattoo her eyeballs two years ago by Luna Cobra. The whites are now shiny sea green.

“It’s just a natural progression,” she says. “I liked the way it looked and I wanted this modification. There was no risk involved. I knew he had tweaked the method in the past 10 years to the safest possible way and I had witnessed that.”

The process was “scary, mentally”, says Garth, a New Zealander who also does body piercing professionally and is a rookie tattoo artist.

“The procedure itself was fine. I felt the cold of the needle. It was a bit scratchy at first. The ink was in blots the first day, but when I woke up the next day, my eyes were |green. It was the most exciting |day of my life!”

 

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