Jahan Yousaf
Jahan Yousaf added a dotwork mandala design on her right forearm behind her varja brush tattoo.
Jahan Yousaf added a dotwork mandala design on her right forearm behind her varja brush tattoo.
Jahan Yousaf has the phrase “Life is a Dance Floor” tattooed on the inside of her right forearm. They are fitting words for an EDM musician.
On the outside of Jahan Yousaf’s right forearm is the Vajra Brush, a work of art by Alex Grey. The piece symbolizes the spiritual nature of art. At the center of the drawing is a combination of a paintbrush and the eastern spiritual symbol Vajra. Two winged snakes wrap around it, similar to the Caduceus symbol. Though it is often used as a symbol of medicine, the Caduceus represents occupations associated with the Greek god Hermes.
The artist explains a means that the meaning of the vajra paintbrush is “to awaken people to their own essence through the light of higher vision. The entire history of art is an expression of universal creativity that invisibly surrounds and supports every creative act. The vajra is a spiritual device, a thunderbolt scepter owned by the Hindu god Indra and adopted by the Buddhist sages as a symbol of the diamond-like clarity and brilliance of the mind’s true nature.”
Jahan Yousaf tattooed the words “One More Night” on her left shoulder and then later added shading and swirls connecting it to her neck tattoo. Eventually she added roses all the way around her neck which fill in the space between the tattoos on her neck and back and make it more cohesive. She has said that she can no longer count how many tattoos she has because they are all like one.
Jahan Yousaf’s first tattoo was “6-8-10” on the left side of her neck. It represents June 8th, 2010, the day that she and her Krewella bandmates put their lives on hold to pursue their music career full-time. In a blog post, she explains:
6/08/10 is the day I decided to drop out of college and quit my side-hustle job along with my sister Yasmine, our former band-member Kris, and our manager Nathan Lim who found us on Myspace. Letting go of the security of my college education as well as my source of income was terrifying, but in the back of my mind I knew that Krewella would never see the light of day if we didn’t nurture the project with daily practice, discipline, and work ethic. If we didn’t make the decision as a group to abandon all other pursuits to commit ourselves to music, I think I would have spent my life always wondering what Krewella could have been. I think I would have been tortured with resentment for not taking a risk. When we got the date tattoo’d on our necks, it was symbolic of our promise to Krewella, to never give up, and in a sense trapped us from ever getting jobs that required us to cover the ink in such an exposed place.
Her sister Yamsine, who has the same tattoo in a different font, bought her the tattoo for her 22nd birthday. Since then, she has surrounded this tattoo with other inkings, but she hasn’t covered it.
Yasmine Yousaf has a paisley design on her neck. It is half of a yin-yang symbol , and her sister Jahan has the other half. “We’re doing a yin-yang, but in a paisley style. We’re each getting fifty percent of the yin and yang,” Yasmine told Rolling Stone. The yin and yang is a Chinese symbol which represents the duality of opposite forces.
They got the ink done by artist Bang Bang, who has tattooed Rihanna, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, and many other stars. “We’re big fans of his work, so it fucking awesome to be tattooed by him,” she says. She and Jahan both placed the tattoos next to their 6-8-10 neck tattoos, which is another matching tattoo that they share.
Yasmine Yousaf has an outline of a lightning bolt tattooed on the back of her upper left arm.
Of all the many tattoos that Juliet Simms has for her husband Andy Biersack, the most obvious is his name “Andy” on her upper right arm. Photos of this tattoo surfaced in October 2011.