Tamara Santibañez’s multidisciplinary practice explores the power of adornment.
Brooklyn-based Santibañez is best known as a tattoo artist specializing in black-and-gray Chicano tattooing, but their multidisciplinary art practice encompasses ceramics, painting, drawing, installation, leatherwork, and oral history, in which they hold a master’s degree. Born and raised in Georgia to a Mexican mother and white American father, Santibañez found punk as a teenager. Their art is steeped in Chicano symbolism and punk aesthetics: they adorn ceramic belts and pyramid studs with flowers, patterns from Talavera tiles, and bandanas. Santibañez is also a leading thinker in the body modification industry and has presented workshops on trauma-informed tattooing and social justice. Afterlife Press, a tattooing-focused publisher based in New Mexico, published their book Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work in 2020. They currently tattoo at a private studio called Flower World in Brooklyn. Read about their morning ritual, which is centered around a green Oaxacan vela de concha (shell candle) given to them by a tattoo client, in “Morning Practice” in the Spring 2024 issue of American Craft.
How do you describe your work or practice in 50 words or less?
My work is interdisciplinary and spans oral history and writing, tattooing, oil painting, ceramics, and leather tooling. I find that ideas and images can have many lives across different forms, and I love to translate them back and forth to see how they maintain or lose their potency.
Tamara Santibañez, Bridge, 2023, glazed porcelain, 4 x 12.75 x 5.75 in.
