The artist I've selected is Tamara Santibañez, a queer Chicana multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. The selected image above details four tattoo works from her body of work. Tamara stands out to be, especially as a tattoo artist, as she brings her community organizing background to her practice. She views tattooing as trauma-informed liberation work and is currently working on a guide as she gathers research, interviews, and is crafting her own writing to ensure tattooing is an intention safe space for everyone. Her work, despite being raised in Georgia and now based in New York, embodies a fierce femme centric West-coast Chicano style. Her black and gray fine line tattoo work illustrates empowered women and oftentimes, kink imagery. Santibañez identifies as a leather fetishist and is registered as a kink and BDSM friendly tattoo artist, making her a high-demand artist for many. From left to right: the first image details a mujer with payasa style face paint looking over shoulder. She's adorned with hoop earrings, hair styled reminiscent of pachucas, with a rose in her hair. The second image details a Santibañez iconic punk nopal, as she mixes Chicano iconography with punk symbols, here the thorns of the nopal being replaced with spikes. The third image is a large scale portrait of a fierce mujer making eye contact with the viewer, think eyebrows raised, she too is adorned and holds up a rose. Lastly, there is a traditional Virgen de Guadalupe tattoo. Santibañez continues to challenge notions of fine art and the ways in which folks disregard Chicano prison style work in the ways she practices it in her unique way.
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