Meet Anna Bokhan: Charlotte’s Go-To Facial Tattoo Artist

About half of Anna Bokhan’s clients come to her south Charlotte studio for cosmetic tattooing or semi-permanent makeup, which involves placing pigment into the skin to enhance eyebrows, eyeliner, and lips. It’s an increasingly popular beauty trend for anyone who doesn’t want to apply makeup every day, and it can last one to three years, depending on technique and skin type.

The other half come to her after doctors have told them nothing more can be done for their scars or facial disfigurements. “This is often the last resort,” Bokhan says. “A lot of clients born with cleft lips want symmetry. Some have dog bites or injuries from car accidents. Post-cancer, when people have lost all their hair, I can do a brow tattoo.” 

Restorative cosmetic tattooing, also known as paramedical tattooing, uses pigments to improve the appearance of scars, disfigurements, and other skin imperfections that result from medical conditions or injuries. “It’s not an alternative to Botox or fillers,” Bokhan says. “It’s its own kind of enhancement that uses color to create an optical illusion on the face.” 

Most clients require two three-hour sessions, and Bokhan uses a topical anesthetic before she gets to work. Costs can vary widely depending on the severity of the scarring and the area treated, but procedures are generally upwards of $1,000 and aren’t covered by insurance. 

It wasn’t always Bokhan’s plan to specialize in this niche, but the 29-year-old has earned a reputation as one of the best restorative tattoo artists in the country. Clients have come from Hawaii, Mexico, Spain, Canada, and the U.K. for her services.

Mara Cosmetic Tattoo Studio uses tattooing techniques to camouflage scars caused by medical conditions or trauma.

Bokhan came to the U.S. from Belarus at 19 with her now-husband, Dzmitry Kavaliou. They spent a few years in Charleston, where Bokhan worked multiple cleaning and serving jobs. “When you’re an immigrant, you don’t have anyone or anything to rely on—you have to work your way up from nothing,” she says. “I was working at the mall, making $8 an hour, and I saw an ad for microblading. I’d had my brows done in my college years because I over-plucked them, but I thought, Wow, that looks so much better than what I had done.”

She saw an opportunity to learn a lucrative new skill, so she flew to Chicago to take a two-day course on microblading and semi-permanent cosmetic tattooing. “At home, I had a degree as a secretary and worked at a construction firm, but I didn’t want to pursue that career path in the U.S.,” she says. “So I put all my investments into this thing and made it work.” 

But in South Carolina, any tattoo above the neck was considered medical, so Bokhan couldn’t see clients without a physician present. She’d have to work at a medical spa or doctor’s office, but without a portfolio, getting a job would be difficult. “Also, I couldn’t speak English very well yet,” she says.

Bokhan and Kavaliou moved to Charlotte, where regulations weren’t as limiting and only a few other aestheticians offered permanent makeup. She quickly gained clients and improved her English. “I started explaining the process to clients from A to Z, and sometimes I’d show them on myself if I didn’t yet know the right word,” she says. A few months in, a client came to her with facial scarring from an accident and asked if Bokhan could help her. “I was nervous, but it was really interesting to me,” she says. “It changed her life, and how she sees herself.”

After a year and a half, Kavaliou came on board to run the business with her. In 2020, they moved to their current 3,500-square-foot location and hired two more full-time tattoo artists. They also changed the name from AB Permanent Makeup Studio (“It was just my initials, AB, but that was too basic”) to Mara Cosmetic Tattoo Studio. “‘Mara’ means ‘dream’ in Belarusian,” Bokhan says. “We put all the meanings into it. It was an American dream for us to come here and open our own business. For a lot of clients, it means getting past a trauma or the feeling of not belonging.”

Most of her restorative clients find her on Instagram, and many have traumatic stories. One was hit by a car at 13 when she was riding her bike and had severe facial scars. Some have hair loss from alopecia or chemotherapy. Many have cleft lips that even the most skilled plastic surgeons couldn’t repair. “I had a client fly in from Mexico with her entire family to fix her cleft lip,” Bokhan says. “It was so awesome to get her to a place where she feels pretty. Her mom still messages me.” 

Bokhan now offers training courses for aestheticians who want to learn cosmetic and paramedical tattooing, and she’s created a line of ink and needles for artists around the world. She’d like to start a YouTube channel where people with scars and disfigurements can learn about paramedical tattooing. “This is a bigger mission,” she says. “I’ve been given this skill not for a random reason. I want to help people who feel like there isn’t a solution for them.”