The Queue: Tamara Santibañez
The Queue: Tamara Santibañez
The Queue: Tamara Santibañez
Tamara Santibañez. Photo by Jayme Gershen.
Tamara Santibañez’s multidisciplinary practice explores the power of adornment.
Brooklyn-based Tamara 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.
tamarasantibanez.com | santibaneztattoo.com | @tamarasantibanez
Tamara Santibañez, Bridge, 2023, glazed porcelain, 4 x x 12.75 x 5.75 in. Photo courtesy of Selenas Mountain.
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, Collar and lily, 2022, glazed porcelain, 17 x 5.5 x 2.5 in. Photo courtesy of Selenas Mountain.
Tamara Santibañez, Orange Eden, 2022, ceramic, epoxy, bandanas, 51 x 10.5 x 4 in. Photo courtesy of Selenas Mountain.
Tamara Santibañez, Only human after all, 2023, glazed porcelain, 18 x 29 x 2 in. Photo courtesy of Selenas Mountain.
Your practice encompasses tattooing as well as ceramics, leatherwork, and painting. As a multimedia artist, how do you decide which medium best suits an idea or image?
Oftentimes I bring a particular idea or image to a number of mediums in order to see how it is uniquely served by each; a painted lily does something different than a ceramic lily. Different executions are in conversation with unique lineages and predecessors, and they create different conversations as a result.
Using a library of images from traditional American tattooing, Adam Shrewsbury’s pots, like this untitled 2024 work, 12 x 7 x 7 in., convey power, protection, sentiment, and whimsy. Photo courtesy of Adam Shrewsbury.
Do you think of tattooing as a craft? Why or why not?
I think of tattooing as a craft first and foremost. It has many cultural origin points, and even in its most contemporary and experimental iterations is deeply indebted to Indigenous development of the practice.
We’ve noticed lots of tattooers who turn to ceramics as a medium. Who are your favorites working in this way?
I have also noticed this shift and am excited by how individually tattooers approach ceramic image application. I love the pristine quality of Alma Proença’s ceramic work, as well as Adam Shrewsbury and Greg Whitehead’s pieces.
If you could have work from any contemporary craft artist in your home or studio, whose would it be and why?
I’ve had the pleasure of showing with Karla Ekaterine Canseco a few times and would be thrilled to have one of her perra vessels in my personal collection.
Which craft artists, exhibitions, or projects do you think the world should know about, and why?
I’m currently enamored of Juan Arango Palacios’s woven tapestries that seamlessly reinterpret their vibrant paintings. Another current favorite is artist duo Asma, who employ metalworking and jewelry making techniques and materials to stunning effect.
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