ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story was originally published in our Dispatches newsletter; sign up to receive notes from our journalists.

In the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, I spent a few weeks observing Chicago’s immigration court to get a sense of how things were changing. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker caught my attention.

Albert Jesús Rodríguez Parra stared into the camera at his virtual bond hearing. He wore the orange shirt given to inmates at a jail in Laredo, Texas, and headphones to listen to the proceedings through an interpreter.

More than a year earlier, Rodríguez had been convicted of shoplifting in the Chicago suburbs. But since then he had seemed to get his life on track. He found a job at Wrigley Field, sent money home to his mom in Venezuela and went to the gym and church with his girlfriend. Then, in November, federal authorities detained him at his apartment on Chicago’s South Side and accused him of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“Are any of your tattoos gang related?” his attorney asked at the hearing, going through the evidence laid out against him in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report. “No,” said Rodríguez, whose tattoos include an angel holding a gun, a wolf and a rose. At one point, he lifted his shirt to show his parents’ names inked across his chest.

He was asked about a TikTok video that shows him dancing to an audio clip of someone shouting, “Te va agarrar el Tren de Aragua,” which means, “The Tren de Aragua is going to get you,” followed by a dance beat. That audio clip has been shared some 60,000 times on TikTok — it’s popular among Venezuelans ridiculing the stereotype that everyone from their country is a gangster. Rodríguez looked incredulous at the thought that this was the evidence against him.

That day, the judge didn’t address the gang allegations. But she denied Rodríguez bond, citing the misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his final hearing was on March 20, just 10 days away. If she granted him asylum, he’d be a free man and could continue his life in the U.S.

I told my editors and colleagues about what I’d heard and made plans to attend the next hearing. I saw the potential for the kind of complicated narrative story that I like: Here was a young immigrant who, yes, had come into the country illegally, but he had turned himself in to border authorities to seek asylum. Yes, he had a criminal record, but it was for a nonviolent offense. And, yes, he had tattoos, but so do the nice, white American moms in my book club. I was certain there are members of Tren de Aragua in the U.S., but if this was the kind of evidence the government had, I found it hard to believe it was an “invasion” as Trump claimed. I asked Rodríguez’s attorney for an interview and began requesting police and court records.

Five days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, a country many of them had never even set foot in. Trump called them all terrorists and gang members. It would be a few days before the men’s names would be made public. Perhaps naively, it didn’t occur to me that Rodríguez might be in that group. Then I logged into his final hearing and heard his attorney say he didn’t know where the government had taken him. The lawyer sounded tired and defeated. Later, he would tell me he had barely slept, afraid that Rodríguez might turn up dead. At the hearing, he begged a government lawyer for information: “For his family’s sake, would you happen to know what country he was sent to?” She told him she didn’t know, either.

I was astonished. I am familiar with the history of authoritarian leaders disappearing people they don’t like in Latin America, the part of the world that my family comes from. I wanted to think that doesn’t happen in this country. But what I had just witnessed felt uncomfortably similar.

As soon as the hearing ended, I got on a call with my colleagues Mica Rosenberg and Perla Trevizo, both of whom cover immigration and had recently written about how the U.S. government had sent other Venezuelan men to Guantanamo. We talked about what we should do with what I’d just heard. Mica contacted a source in the federal government who confirmed, almost immediately, that Rodríguez was among the men that our country had sent to El Salvador.

The news suddenly felt more real and intimate to me. One of the men sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador now had a name and a face and a story that I had heard from his own mouth. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

As a news organization, we decided to put significant resources into investigating who these men really are and what happened to them, bringing in many talented ProPublica journalists to help pull records, sift through social media accounts, analyze court data and find the men’s families. We teamed up with a group of Venezuelan journalists from the outlets Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News who were also starting to track down information about the men.

We spoke to the relatives and attorneys of more than 100 of the men and obtained internal government records that undercut the Trump administration’s claims that all the men are “monsters,” “sick criminals” and the “worst of the worst.” We also published a story about how, by and large, the men were not hiding from federal immigration authorities. They were in the system; many had open asylum cases like Rodríguez and were waiting for their day in court before they were taken away and imprisoned in Central America.

On July 18 — after I’d written the first draft of this note to you — we began to hear some chatter about a potential prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela. Later that same day, the men had been released. We’d been in the middle of working on a case-by-case accounting of the Venezuelan men who’d been held in El Salvador. Though they’d been released, documenting who they are and how they got caught up in this dragnet was still important, essential even, as was the impact of their incarceration.

The result is a database we published last week including profiles of 238 of the men Trump deported to a Salvadoran prison.

From the moment I heard about the men’s return to Venezuela, I thought about Rodríguez. He’d been on my mind since embarking on this project. I messaged with his mother for days as we waited for the men to be processed by the government of Nicolás Maduro and released to their families.

Finally, one morning last week, he went home. We spoke later that afternoon. He said he was relieved to be home with his family but felt traumatized. He told me he wants the world to know what happened to him in the Salvadoran prison — daily beatings, humiliation, psychological abuse. “There is no reason for what I went through,” he said. “I didn’t deserve that.”

The Salvadoran government has denied mistreating the Venezuelan prisoners.

We asked the Trump administration about its evidence against Rodríguez. This is the entirety of its statement: “Albert Jesús Rodriguez Parra is an illegal alien from Venezuela and Tren de Aragua gang member. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023, under the Biden Administration.”

While Rodríguez was incarcerated in El Salvador and no one knew what would happen to him, the court kept delaying hearings for his asylum case. But after months of continuances, on Monday, Rodríguez logged into a virtual hearing from Venezuela. “Oh my gosh, I am so happy to see that,” said Judge Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had happened in his case.

Rodríguez’s attorney said that his client had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. “I can’t even describe to this court what he went through,” he said. “He’s getting psychological help, and that's my priority.”

It was a brief hearing, perhaps five minutes. Rodríguez’s lawyer mentioned his involvement in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. The government lawyer said little, except to question whether Rodríguez was even allowed to appear virtually due to “security issues” in Venezuela.

Finally, the judge said she would administratively close the case while the litigation plays out. “If he should hopefully be able to come back to the U.S., we’ll calendar the case,” she said.

Naseem turned to Rodríguez, who was muted and looked serious. “You don’t have to worry about reappearing until this gets sorted out,” she told him. He nodded and soon logged off.

We plan to keep reporting on what happened and have another story coming soon about Rodríguez and the other men’s experiences inside the prison. Please reach out if you have information to share.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Melissa Sanchez.

In a yoga training I just did, they asked that exact question. I feel like in the space of teaching [yoga], it’s literally to give people the mental space from their everyday lives. To give them a container to be in—to reflect, sit, be quiet, separate from the outside world, and see what comes up. With tattooing, I feel like it’s about making people feel more beautiful. Every time I get a tattoo, I feel like I look more like myself—it’s about making people look more like how they feel on the inside. Also giving people a space to lay, be quiet, listen to music, and not engage in anything other than the act of receiving.

How do you see the relationship between teaching yoga and tattooing?

I love teaching because it’s much less of a high stakes environment. A one-on-one interaction is so different from leading a collective. I love the balance of both because they feel equally life-giving, exciting, and embodying. For me, yoga is very internal—moving, burning, cleansing—while tattooing is very external. Tattooing feels like, “This is who I am externally.” Yoga feels like, “This is who I’m trying to be inwardly.” I think they complement each other extremely well. I also tattoo a lot of young people, and I teach a lot of older people. There’s been this funny crossover where I’ve had tattoo clients start to take my yoga classes because they vibe with me, and then I’ve had older people want to get tattoos because they feel safe, and trust my energy or my intention. It’s been cool to mix those communities and introduce them to each other. I like as much diversity in age as I can be around—both sides can teach you a lot about life.

Why do you get tattoos?

I think it’s genuinely so beautiful to be able to decorate yourself—with clothing, color, the way we can do our hair. Something about being able to adorn and decorate skin feels so cool and freeing.

I’m curious how giving and receiving tattoos has informed your perception of permanence, and the passage of time?

When I receive tattoos, the feeling of permanence is so comforting—to think that I’ll be 87 years old, hopefully, with everything I have on my body. Then I get to look back at things I got—I have a tattoo I got in India 5 to 8 years ago—and remember that I’m still that person. I’m still in that body. You know when you see a picture of yourself at five years old and you’re like, “Whoah, I’m still that person”? That’s how it feels. Whether I got it at a good or bad time, there’s something really grounding and comforting about knowing that person is within me. It makes you reflect on everything you’ve been through. For me, tattoos are a timestamp.

For other people, I feel like I watch them really practice surrender. They give up control to the artist to a certain extent. Obviously, they choose the placement and confirm they want the design, but then there’s a level of letting go. You’re fully giving me your body, and you’re trusting me while you lay there and hope that it turns out how you wanted. I’ve had a lot of past clients tell me they feel like they can take on way more risk and trust other people, all from the act of getting tattooed. I think the permanence of it all loosens people up, and makes them practice surrender. It makes them take their bodies less seriously. We’re so body centered and body focused. It reminds people that this is just a vessel to decorate.

Outside of all external definitions, how would you define artwork?

For me, it’s simply the inner world made visual. Someone trying to represent what’s happening inside of them. There’s so many mediums that are possible through that, which is where artwork is interesting to me.

Have you always felt drawn to bodywork?

I feel like massage came up first and foremost when I was a kid. I used to massage people’s feet under the table at Thanksgiving. I also loved giving face massages.

How did tattooing come into your life?

I think when I started practicing [tattooing], I recognized a similar feeling that I would get when I would teach [yoga]. There is an overlapping sense of embodiment—a coming into yourself more than you did before you arrived. Teaching came first, and then tattooing started a year or two after I did my [yoga teacher] training. Tattooing is way more personal. You’re working with one-on-one relationships rather than teaching a group of 20 or 30, but you’re still making people feel embodied and relaxed, creating that container for reflection. Tattooing is also more physical because people are leaving with something very permanent, which is scary.

How did you find the confidence to tattoo for the first time?

I practiced on myself for a while… But there was no confidence. It kind of just happened. I had a few moments of messing up at the very beginning, where it would hit me like a wall—the idea that you’re doing something extremely permanent—and I had to be checked a few times to realize it really was high stakes. I think the ignorant optimism you have as a young person, to just kind of do something and not really care about the outcome, actually served me pretty well in terms of getting into it, and doing it consistently without fear.

Why did you choose hand poke tattooing as your medium?

I started that way because it felt more accessible and less scary. Machines were really expensive, and I didn’t know much about them. Then I fell in love with the process of it, the quiet of it. I love slow art. I love things that take a long time. In an increasingly fast-paced, fast fashion kind of world, it’s so much harder to find things made slowly, and to find people who want things made slowly. To slow down in general is just more of a commodity. The slowness is what tethers me to it. Also, knowing that it’s pre-electricity. It’s funny that it’s coming back into trend. Hand poke is the original form of tattooing; it’s how people did it for thousands of years. Connecting with the original form of the practice is really cool to me.

How would you describe your style?

The technical tattoo term would be micro realism: small things that have a realistic quality to them. I wouldn’t say I do a lot of abstract work. I do a lot of realistic and natural forms through dot work, through pointillism—plants, animals, and shells. I would say my style is soft, and compliments the body well. It’s usually specific to what people find sacred, which happens to be natural life forms that you find outside.

Do you have a favorite piece you’ve ever done?

Yeah. In January I gave this girl a really big bird on her back that went from shoulder to shoulder. It took two days. I had never done a tattoo that took multiple days before. That was really awesome—not to rush and just be with one person for two days. The bird is a native Hawaiian bird and the client is from the island, so it meant a lot to her to wear that animal on her back. It was such a crazy honor to be the person to give it to her. Since then, I want to take on bigger pieces.

How has social media influenced your professional growth while being based in Hawaii?

I really like living rurally because a lot of the work I do comes through word-of-mouth. Everyone is talking and showing each other their tattoos. I would much rather work in that way, through organic ways of sharing and spreading my art. But social media is awesome. I’m able to reach people in cities and then I can afford to go to those cities and bring my art to other places. Before I moved [to Kauai], a few tattoo artists told me I had to be in New York or LA if I wanted to make it. I didn’t really want to do that, or believe that it was true. Social media has allowed me to be where I want to be and still reach people in more urban environments.

What are the challenges that come with owning your own shop?

Self-management, in general. There’s not a lot of challenges with owning and managing the specific space because I feel like I know how to do it really well. I know what I need. It’s literally just me. I don’t have any employees or people to oversee. I would say the challenges are the logistics of starting it alone and doing everything alone—business stuff, financial stuff, tax stuff. But I’m still in my first six years of tattooing… So I think time will help.

What do you gain from guest spotting at other shops and being around other creatives?

It’s so nice to just ask questions. To figure out what materials people are using, techniques, what kind of printers or online platforms people use to enhance their work… It’s really nice to be around other people who’ve also made this their career. It can be so up and down. Sometimes you make a lot of money, sometimes you make no money. It’s dependent upon the economy—how much disposable income people have. It’s just so nice to be around people that are down for that challenge, even though it can be really hard to have such an unpredictable and taxing job, physically and mentally. It’s such a cool community to be in.

Do you remember the best piece of advice another tattooer has given you?

Don’t rush. Oh, and quality over quantity. Yes, you can make more money by taking four or five appointments in a day, but the quality of your work is going to go down. It’s obviously nice to make more money, especially as a freelance artist, but what we’re making is forever. Prioritize the quality of the work over the money that could be made by rushing.

How do you ground and care for yourself after the intense physical and energetic exchange of tattooing? Do you turn to yoga or any other self-soothing practices?

I love that people feel so extremely comfortable with me, and speak to me about really personal things going on in their lives. I know a lot of tattooers who have their headphones on while doing their job, and their client is on their phone or listening to music. Personally, that’s not the kind of tattooer I want to be. To be able to hold as much space as I do, I think I need to take less people, eventually. I’m holding too much space for too many people right now.

The practice that keeps me from carrying too much—which I’m still trying to practice—is to visualize a barrier around myself while I’m tattooing, like a thin film of light protecting me, so I don’t take it home as much. Burning something after really helps. Right now, it feels important for me to allow people to let their minds run and say whatever they’re feeling. I don’t want to stop people from doing that, but I don’t think I’ve quite mastered how to not let it overwhelm me. The answer is not to close myself off. I think I am still seeking those tools. But I’m also going to be doing this my whole life, so I have a lot of time to figure it out.

Do you have advice for a freelance creative starting out?

Make art for yourself, not for the audience. When you authentically make what you think is cool, and what you find incredible, you’ll attract people that want to support you. If you’re trying to make art for an audience, you’re not going to build a sustainable audience that will follow your journey. Instead of catering to what people already want, show them something they didn’t even know they wanted by making it for yourself first.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sammy Steiner.

I lost my job last January. But it’s funny, I had been thinking about leaving that job literally the beginning of that month. I was finally ready to pursue freelance and tattooing more and dive into investing in myself and my art more, because I was able to grow following, or my art account, a lot over the last three years. In and out of tech and full-time jobs, jumping in and out of tattooing part-time, doing freelance gigs part-time—it felt like my brain was splitting. It felt like I was doing a disservice to my art to not do it full time.

I wasn’t going to leave [my job] until the spring because I had just come out of the holiday season. I had my birthday in the second week of January. At my birthday party, I remember having this moment… I was pretty drunk, but I felt like, “This year is going to change a lot for me. I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen, but I feel like my life is going to look super different in a year.” Two weeks later I got laid off and I was like, “Okay, well, I’m going to jump into freelance earlier than I expected.”

I was also moving at the time. My partner and I were living together for seven years and we decided to move apart for our own personal relationship growth. It’s been the best decision ever. Neither of us have lived alone before. We’re still together but it was a huge [task of] uncoupling, detangling all of our personal items. It was a lot of change at once. Then I went to Asia last September; I hadn’t been home in eight years. That also fundamentally changed how I felt about my identity. My grandpa passed during that trip.

Overall, even though the whole year was very chaotic, I would say that it’s been my best year yet in terms of what I’ve been able to create. I was right about the fact that if I just invested my full ass into making and thinking deeply about my artwork, it would pay back tenfold. It’s been nothing but amazing to be able to just do whatever I want.

Not having one foot in a creative career and one foot in a more corporate career, you have the mind space cleared to return to your roots of why you started your creative practice.

Definitely. Because I’ve had more clarity on myself, I’ve had a lot more clarity on my artwork or what I want to be doing with it. And the ideas come flowing in a lot easier than they were. I was dealing with some major burnout in 2022 and 2023. That was the worst period creatively for me. I feel like I finally came out the other end of it. People don’t know, but burnout can last years.

The weight of being burned out and the account growth being very quick… I buckled under that pressure. Learning to create under many eyes was hard. Before I was such a small account, like 800 followers, and I would just post whatever the fuck. I feel like I can’t do that anymore. At certain points I was like, “People have expectations for what Gentle Oriental is going to post.” I feel like I still work through that every day.

Pressure under perception is huge and you’ve been really open about that on your social media—your love-hate relationship with Instagram and the ways the algorithms have shifted.

Oh, yeah. I have written about that a few times. I think [Instagram] is dying right now. I also think people are really burnt out by social media. I know more people than not now who are like, “ I haven’t checked my Instagram in a few days.” Then that’s stressful for artists who like to thrive on social media. If the people are not on social media anymore, then what do we do? That’s the problem that I’m dealing with right now. My Substack is always better. I think people are more reliably checking email. I feel like that’s always been a very stable method of communication and digesting information at a healthy distance.

I don’t really have hopes anymore for things to go viral on Instagram the way it used to for me. I do feel like there’s over-saturation in the market right now. When I first started posting, there was this Asian American art renaissance happening. It was really cool. There was so much newness. I don’t think people are tired of artists or art or any of it at face value, I think they’re just probably tired of the way that it’s being consumed and the way they’re being forced to consume it.

I still have pockets of joy when I run into people in real life who are like, “Oh, I love your art.” That means a lot more to me than seeing 100 likes on a post… So this year I’m optimizing for what I can do to meet people in real life or have my work appear in physical locations instead of always being confined to the ‘gram. Maybe there’s a move back to traditional media in terms of showing art. I’m trying to make more prints this year. Objects would help me feel like my art is more tethered to this world [rather] than just being on a screen. Tattooing has also always helped me feel that way, because it’s physically tethered.

I’m trying to push myself to go to events and be not afraid of meeting people. I know people are out there trying to host things. We all say we want community and then we’re too baby to leave the house. I just need to deal with that. Just go to the thing.

Especially in a city like New York, everyone is so busy. Community for me over the past few years has been defined as showing your face as often as you can, just going and going until your absence is noticeable when you’re not there. But that’s very high effort.

Yeah, it is super high effort. I’m trying to meet more people for sure, but that’s so unquantifiable. I try to go for coffee with randos from Instagram more often these days. I feel like when I was really burnt out, I was getting a lot of requests like that, and I would be [say] no… When you’re really burnt out, it’s easy to feel that way because you barely have enough energy for yourself.

You were saying your burnout lasted a few years. What was your process of getting out of it? Was it conscious or was it just time?

It was time. It was time and it was unconscious… There was a period where I just didn’t have any idea what to make. I didn’t even know what to draw for flash. I was feeling so jaded. I don’t even know how to explain how depressed I was about my art. I was just like, “Does this matter? Is this anything?” It was hitting a rock and trying to chisel out something recognizable.

I think also for artists, if you’re personally going through a lot in your own life, it can get really in the way. I think there’s two ways: one way is you can channel that pain or difficulty into your art. Another way is if your art is so much a part of you that you feel like you having issues is making your art have issues. It’s hard being an artist, man. It’s a lot of working through your own stuff so that you can also work through your art. It’s so personally informed, especially my art. Anyone who is making very identity-based art, if you’re having an identity crisis, your art is going to be a little fucked for a little bit.

If I had one message for any artist going through burnout, it’s that you will get through it. There will be a day that comes when creating doesn’t feel so difficult anymore. I would say that I’m at that place now.

Would you say that it was a palpable shift? Or was it just like, one day you woke up and didn’t feel that way anymore?

[It happened over] a few months, I think. It was probably during 2024 while I was getting out of my job… When I was in the worst of my burnout, I would dissociate completely from my art. I would try to draw something and be like, “Who’s drawing this right now? I’m not drawing this right now. I don’t even know what this is.” It was just the weirdest feeling. Me and my art were very far apart during that period of burnout, and slowly they shift back together until they’re one cohesive blob. So now we’ve re-coupled.

That makes a lot of sense. At that point you had already built up a brand, so you knew “This is what Gentle Oriental would make,” but then you felt so detached from it.

Yeah, maybe it was that. And then I realized towards the end of it, “Gentle Oriental is just going to make whatever the fuck I want.” People will like it as long as I’m being more genuine to myself. I do find that the most genuine artifacts that I’ve made are the stuff that people gravitate towards the most. I can usually feel when something’s going to be good while I’m trying it or when I’m drawing a thing and I’m finishing it; there’s this euphoria that happens at the end of a piece where I finish it and I look at it and I’m like… I’m not religious, but in the Bible, when they say “God looked at his creations and said, ‘This is good’“—I feel that way. [It’s] that feeling where you’re like, “Yeah, I kind of cooked.”

God popped off when he made humans.

Exactly. He was like, “Damn I did that.”

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jun Chou.

The vision

“Are you sure you don’t want to just, you know, remove it?” the artist asks assertively.

I considered this before making my appointment at the open-air studio. It’s a relic from a bleak time, after all. But history wasn’t meant to be erased.

“Yep, let’s stick with the plan.”

I’m nervous I’ll prickle too much once the algae ink-coated needle pierces my forearm, now sun-loved and wrinkled. But the process ends up being way less painful than I remember.

After a couple of pokes, the tattoo of my youth, The climate changed, has a new ending: And so did we.

— a drabble by Emma Loewe

The spotlight

Roughly half of L.A. tattoo artist Sonny Robinson Bailey’s clients come to him for climate-themed tats: a motley crew of surfers, scuba divers, scientists, and environmental scholars no doubt lured by his Instagram bio: “tattoos for the climate concerned.”

Originally from the U.K., Robinson Bailey started focusing on climate tattoos after moving to the U.S. and feeling overwhelmed by all the waste he saw. Some of his designs are quite dramatic (think: a cartoon sun with burning-hot lasers coming out of its eyes; “MINDLESS CONSUMPTION” written in commanding letters), while others are more subtle nods to planetary thresholds and tipping points.

“I did a flash tattoo day a couple of years ago where I wrote a few paragraphs of facts and figures about the climate, put all the numbers in boxes, and tattooed them on people,” he told me on a video call. Five people showed up to get inked with numbers such as .9 (projected sea level rise by the end of the 21st century, in meters) and 1.5° (the warming threshold set forth in the Paris Agreement, in Celsius).

He added a new tattoo to his personal collection that day, too, he said, maneuvering the camera to show me the 2.12° above his left elbow — the approximate amount that global temps have risen since the Industrial Revolution, in Fahrenheit.

Sonny Robinson Bailey’s “2.12” tattoo. Courtesy of Sonny Robinson Bailey

While this figure will eventually become outdated, Robinson Bailey doesn’t mind. “I like to look at my tattoos as a journal,” he said. “[They] are always going to be a sign of the times.” And, he said, looking at it helps him sit in the discomfort of global warming. While many climate disasters feel far away when he reads about them in the news, tattoos “bring things back to reality.”

Robinson Bailey’s clients all have their own reasons for getting climate-themed tattoos. He recalls a researcher who asked for a coral tat to celebrate their work making reefs more resistant to heat waves, and a New Yorker who got the .9 sea level rise tattoo in solidarity with their threatened coastal city. Robinson Bailey said that talking to people about their connections to the climate is “the best part” of his job.

I took a page from his book and spoke with several people who have climate-themed tattoos about why they got them and what they represent. For some, they are reminders of what to fight for; for others, an ever-present reminder of what’s already lost. Almost all of them said they plan to get more. Here are their tats and the stories behind them.

Most of visual artist Justin Brice Guariglia’s photography, sculpture, and installation work explores human relationships with the natural world, built upon a foundation of climate science. So when he felt the itch to get tatted in 2016, it was only natural to turn to the latest NASA data for source material.

Sitting in a bean bag chair in his studio in downtown New York, Brice Guariglia pulled up his sleeve to reveal a NASA Surface Temperature Analysis graph climbing all the way up his right arm.

Justin Brice Guariglia’s Surface Temperature Analysis tattoo. Studio Justin Brice Guariglia

The tattoo, which shows the planet’s surface temperature from 1880 to 2016, is accurate and to scale. Brice Guariglia even emailed the scientist behind the work, James Hansen, for fact-checking before he made it permanent. “If you make art about climate or the environment, it’s so important to know the science,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just decoration.”

Although his tattoo is essentially global warming immortalized, Brice Guariglia isn’t distressed when he looks at it — or when he explains it to others who inevitably mistake it for a mountain range or an electrocardiogram reading. “It doesn’t feel negative to me. If it felt negative, I wouldn’t have gotten it.” Instead, he said, it reminds him of his mission to keep working for a better future. “Climate change is the moral imperative of our time.”

Sanjana Paul is currently a graduate student at MIT focused on conflict negotiation in the energy transition, but she’s worn many hats throughout her career in climate. Trained as an electrical engineer, Paul (who was featured on the Grist 50 list in 2023) has collected atmospheric science data with NASA, hosted environmental hackathons, and pushed for climate policy as a community organizer.

The tattoo on her right ankle — the “ground” symbol, which resembles an upside-down T with two lines underneath — is a symbol for her of what has been constant throughout these diverse experiences.

“In circuit diagrams, the ground symbol is where the electric potential of the circuit is zero, so it’s your starting point,” she explained. She got the tat after she graduated from engineering school as a way to mark the starting point of her new career. Now, it nudges her to stay “grounded” — that is, motivated by her deep love for the planet — as she engages in different forms of climate work. And, she added, “In all seriousness, it was just funny.”

Sanjana Paul’s ground symbol and Green New Deal tattoos. Courtesy of Sanjana Paul

As for the “GND” letters above it, Paul added those after her community successfully advocated for a Green New Deal in Cambridge, Massachusetts — a package of environmental policies that passed the legislature in 2023.

“It took us two years of concerted effort,” Paul said. “[The tattoo] was kind of a commemorative thing to say, ‘We did it.’” She still has a screenshot of the photo of it she sent to her group chat when the legislation passed.

Paul, who also has a likeness of the NASA satellite Calipso on her arm, is currently dreaming up her next climate tattoo: an ode to the North Atlantic Ocean in honor of an offshore wind project she’s involved with. The tattoos in her growing collection are reminders of the unexpected places her work has taken her, and she also considers them gateways into climate conversations with all types of new people who ask about what the designs mean.

France-based photographer Mary-Lou Mauricio started something of a movement two years ago, when she began taking photographs for a campaign she called “Born in … PPM.” In the lead-up to COP27, the 2022 U.N. climate summit, she used temporary makeup to “tattoo” subjects with the measurement of the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere the year they were born — a way to capture just how much our overreliance on fossil fuels has changed the Earth’s chemistry — and photographed portraits of them.

The campaign caught on, and to date, she has collected over 4,000 images of people all around the world who have marked their personal ppm on their hands, faces, and stomachs. The portraits offer a way to visualize rapidly rising global greenhouse gas emissions, particularly when older subjects are juxtaposed with younger ones.

She knows of at least two people who have gotten their numbers permanently inked — and she has as well.

Mary-Lou Mauricio’s ppm tattoo. “Born in … PPM” / Mary-Lou Mauricio

For Mauricio, the 340 ppm tattoo on her right shoulder represents the marks that climate change has already left on her and her family. “My parents live in the south of Portugal, where droughts are becoming increasingly severe,” she said. “In 2022, a fire ravaged my parents’ region. … Sometimes they call me when it’s raining, because it’s becoming so rare.”

She told me that this ppm tattoo likely won’t be her last: “I’d like to add the ppms of my children’s births, because they’re the ones I’m campaigning for.”

— Emma Loewe

More exposure

• Browse: a collection of images from the “Born In … PPM” series, by Mary-Lou Mauricio
• Watch: Justin Brice Guariglia’s TedX talk on the critical role that art plays in climate communications
• Read: more about the history and cultural significance of tattoos (Smithsonian Magazine)
• Watch: a short film exploring the movement to revive Indigenous tattoo traditions in Canada (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

A parting shot

A collage of flash tattoo designs by Sonny Robinson Bailey, featuring climate, sustainability, and conservation messages.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Spotlight: Courtesy of Sonny Robinson Bailey; Studio Justin Brice Guariglia; Courtesy of Sanjana Paul; “Born in … PPM” / Mary-Lou Mauricio

Parting shot: Courtesy of Sonny Robinson Bailey

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Tattoos for the climate concerned’: Why people are getting inked for the planet on Oct 23, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emma Loewe.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard in Indianapolis on Sept. 28, 2022.

Photo: Kaiti Sullivan for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Some three hours into the 14-hour inquisition of Dr. Caitlin Bernard before the Indiana physician’s licensing board, the assistant attorney general asked her an odd question: “Do you have a tattoo of a coat hanger that says, ‘Trust women,’ on your body?”

It was hard to tell which part offended him more: the coat hanger or “trust women.”

Bernard’s attorney objected to the question as irrelevant. And legally speaking, it was. For the record, Bernard does have such a tattoo, on her left foot, inked years ago to remind her of life in the bad old days. She is not ashamed of it.

But the question was certainly not an opening for the doctor to express pride in her profession and her advocacy of reproductive health care. It was not meant to seek information. Nor was the query a misstep. The interrogator, Cory Voight, was on a mission to prove this respected OB-GYN unfit to practice medicine. 

But, it seemed, even that was not enough. As the surrogate for his boss, the fiercely anti-abortion Indiana state Attorney General Todd Rokita, Voight wanted to tear the defendant down emotionally and in the eyes of the public. Asking a woman in a professional hearing about a mark on her body — using the word “body” — was part of a larger strategy, one long deployed by anti-abortion forces against abortion-seekers. Now they’re using it against providers and advocates as well. The strategy is humiliation.

Bernard’s trial, at the May 25 meeting of Indiana’s physician’s licensing board, was the latest chapter in Rokita’s yearlong smear campaign. In June 2022, just after the Dobbs decision triggered the misnamed “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban in Ohio, Bernard performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from that state. She told a local reporter the girl’s age, gestational stage, and state of origin, not her name or any other identifying details. She spoke again at a reproductive rights rally, warning that thousands of Indianans, including children, would be subject to similar, unnecessary trauma should the state pass an abortion ban in an upcoming special session. The case became national news. Bernard was celebrated as a hero.

Rokita was apoplectic. First, he circulated the calumny that Bernard had invented the patient. When it turned out the patient existed and a suspected perpetrator was arrested, Rokita cast around for laws Bernard might have broken. He came up with another false allegation — that she’d violated patient privacy and reporting laws — and petitioned the board to revoke her license. To do the job, Rokita sent the slimy-mouthed Voight. During the trial, many of his questions began, “Isn’t it true that …”

In another volley of questions, attempting to show that Bernard used the rape victim as a political tool, Voight declared, “No physician has been as brazen in pursuit of their own agenda.” “Brazen” is another one of those words, evoking “brazen hussy.” “She is unfit to practice medicine.” Morally unfit, that is.

Bernard is tough. She has withstood years of harassment and threats of violence against both her and her family. But several times during the hours of insinuation about her allegedly selfish, rash, and illegal conduct, the doctor was reduced to tears.

The IndyStar called the trial “persecution not prosecution.” After leading questions from a board member about the mushrooming media attention, including national news in which the alleged rapist’s identity and address were revealed, Bernard allowed that it might have been wise to describe her patient more elliptically — a sort of forced confession that she’d inadvertently harmed the child.

In the end, the board did not defrock the doctor. It did, however, find Bernard in violation of patient privacy laws and fined her $3,000 — permanent stains on her record. Arguably, her ordeal burnished her esteem among physicians, who decried her censure. Rokita did not break her.

But the champions of forced motherhood scored a point. The principled, trusted, and nationally respected Bernard was humiliated.

Dr. Leah Torres poses for a portrait at the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on March 15, 2022.

Photo: Allen G. Breed/AP

In 2020, Alabama abortion doctor Leah Torres was also punished by that state’s medical board for speaking out. In a moment of frustration two years earlier, asked by yet another troll if she heard the fetuses screaming when she aborted them, Torres sent off an angry tweet. Fired from a job in Utah, she had been invited to join the staff at the West Alabama Women’s Center, the only abortion provider for hundreds of miles around. Not two weeks into her employment, the state board charged her with lying on her medical license application about everything from her mental health to her intention to treat Covid-19 patients. She was also accused of making “public statements related to the practice of medicine which violate the high standards of honesty, diligence, prudence, and ethical integrity demanded from physicians licensed to practice in Alabama” — most likely a reference to the 2018 tweet.

“I felt like a child being reprimanded.”

In an unusual move, the state suspended Torres’s license during the investigation and through the end of the hearing. Seven months of earning nothing while incurring thousands of dollars in legal debt.

The committee that reviewed the board’s allegations did not concur with them. Nevertheless, they found that parts of Torres’s application “were suggestive of deceptive answers and a lack of ethical integrity.” She was required to take an ethics course and pay $4,000 in administrative fees to the board. Like Bernard’s, Torres’s reputation was tarred.

Also like Bernard, Torres was publicly humiliated. When investigators first came to her office to deliver the charges, they left with her physical license. “I felt like a child being reprimanded,” Torres told The Guardian.

Sometimes it appears that people in power are making their petitioners grovel simply because they can. Such nastiness was on display in May at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, during oral arguments regarding the case in which federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, raising the prospect of the abortion drug’s removal from the market nationally.

After a series of weird conjectures and uninformed queries, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod set upon Jessica Ellsworth, attorney for drug distributor Danco Laboratories, for perceived rudeness in the company’s brief. Introducing the scolding session with her opinion that the filings contained “rather unusual remarks” that “we don’t normally see from very esteemed counsel,” Elrod proceeded to quote from the brief: “defied longstanding precedent,” “an unprecedented judicial assault,” “the court’s relentless one-sided narrative.” She went on. 

Might the authors have been “under a rush,” perhaps “exhausted from this whole process,” the judge asked in sweetly assaultive tones. Did counsel “want to say anything about that?”

Ellsworth defended the language as reflecting the extraordinarily politicized nature of the ruling. Elrod persisted, offering alternative, politer phrasing. “Do you think it’s appropriate to attack the district court personally?” she prompted. “I wanted to give you a chance to comment on that.”

It was not an attack on the judge, Ellsworth replied. It was a critique of the court, the decision. But Elrod would not let up, and finally, the lawyer submitted. “I certainly think with more time, we may have ratcheted down some of that,” she said.

Penitence extracted from the prideful child, Judge James Ho took over with his own recital of sins, this time the FDA’s.

As both the method and the goal of misogynists, racists, abusers, tyrants, torturers, and the systems that uphold their power, humiliation can be its own reward. But it is not merely a social tool, and it does not act alone. Humiliation, along with shame and fear, are produced by and in turn fortify the laws that intrude on intimate life, control bodies, and punish those who resist. Together, restrictive laws and destructive emotions create the disciplinary environment that the right’s culture warriors have prayed and labored toward for decades.

Laws abridging bodily autonomy — bathroom patrols and genital inspections of student athletes, compulsory sonograms and lectures intended to get abortion patients to change their minds — intentionally humiliate their subjects, and always have. People seeking legal abortions in pre-Roe America, for instance, were required to seek approval from a (usually all-male) hospital board. Often, the winning plea was one of mental instability or suicidality — that is, self-incriminating evidence of the pregnant woman’s unfitness to mother.

Now activist public servants like Rokita and the members of politically appointed medical boards can turn to legislators to give their personal vendettas the force of law. Abortion remains legal in Indiana while a near-total ban is enjoined pending legal resolution, but confusion and fear about the law have reduced the number of abortions there precipitously. Alabama defines abortion as a Class A felony, carrying penalties of up to 99 years. West Alabama Women’s Center now provides comprehensive reproductive care, minus abortion, to low-income clients. Its staff is demoralized, and the clinic is struggling to stay afloat.

How do you fight an emotion? One way is to turn it around on its evokers.

A group of abortion rights comedians called Abortion Access Front have been staging political theater aimed at puncturing the confidence of the men legislating things they know nothing about: notably, women’s bodies. Their “Send in the Gowns” campaign encourages women to leave voicemails with as many gynecological details as possible, addressing the lawmakers as what they pretend to be. “Hi. Hello. This message is for Dr. Nutt,” begins Beth Stelling, calling South Carolina state Republican Rep. Roger Nutt. “I am lucky enough to have a womb [but] I do need advice because I don’t want to go to prison!” Her voice is both cheerful and earnest. “So the person I was making out with can’t stay hard with a condom, and it’s like, if I consent to the raw-dog activity and I get pregnant — I’m not on birth control, by the way, because it gave me anxiety, depression, dark patches of skin on my face …” In Tennessee, Abortion Access Front activists showed up at statehouse offices for medical “appointments” in hospital gowns.

In Florida, defenders of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights have taken to tossing large, white, women’s panties emblazoned with political messages — “pantygrams” — at those responsible for the excrement issuing from the state’s legislative body. One such missive missile, launched by Bonnie Patterson-James at a May protest, landed near a county sheriff, who claimed it bounced and hit him on the leg. Patterson-James was arrested and charged with felony battery of a law enforcement officer. She was also among the protesters who panty-pelted legislators from the gallery of the Florida House while they debated the bill banning gender-affirming care. Weeks after the event, several participants were arrested; Guerdy Remy, a nurse who has run for local office, turned herself in and was cuffed, booked, and locked up in county jail before being released on $500 bail six hours later.

The arrests were part of Florida’s crackdown on dissent, particularly at the Capitol, which accounted for over 30 arrests during the 60-day legislative session. “They’re arresting them for tossing panties,” commented a spokesperson for the Florida Freedom to Read Project. “Seems Ron DeSantis and his administration are the ones who have gotten their panties in a twist.”

One of the demonstrators told the Orlando Sentinel that the arrests were payback for embarrassing the governor and the legislature — and a sign of the action’s success. Embarrassment may seem a weak rejoinder to systematic humiliation. But it’s a form of refusal to kneel — and that is the only way to pull the powerful down from on high.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Judith Levine.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard in Indianapolis on Sept. 28, 2022.

Photo: Kaiti Sullivan for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Some three hours into the 14-hour inquisition of Dr. Caitlin Bernard before the Indiana physician’s licensing board, the assistant attorney general asked her an odd question: “Do you have a tattoo of a coat hanger that says, ‘Trust women,’ on your body?”

It was hard to tell which part offended him more: the coat hanger or “trust women.”

Bernard’s attorney objected to the question as irrelevant. And legally speaking, it was. For the record, Bernard does have such a tattoo, on her left foot, inked years ago to remind her of life in the bad old days. She is not ashamed of it.

But the question was certainly not an opening for the doctor to express pride in her profession and her advocacy of reproductive health care. It was not meant to seek information. Nor was the query a misstep. The interrogator, Cory Voight, was on a mission to prove this respected OB-GYN unfit to practice medicine. 

But, it seemed, even that was not enough. As the surrogate for his boss, the fiercely anti-abortion Indiana state Attorney General Todd Rokita, Voight wanted to tear the defendant down emotionally and in the eyes of the public. Asking a woman in a professional hearing about a mark on her body — using the word “body” — was part of a larger strategy, one long deployed by anti-abortion forces against abortion-seekers. Now they’re using it against providers and advocates as well. The strategy is humiliation.

Bernard’s trial, at the May 25 meeting of Indiana’s physician’s licensing board, was the latest chapter in Rokita’s yearlong smear campaign. In June 2022, just after the Dobbs decision triggered the misnamed “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban in Ohio, Bernard performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from that state. She told a local reporter the girl’s age, gestational stage, and state of origin, not her name or any other identifying details. She spoke again at a reproductive rights rally, warning that thousands of Indianans, including children, would be subject to similar, unnecessary trauma should the state pass an abortion ban in an upcoming special session. The case became national news. Bernard was celebrated as a hero.

Rokita was apoplectic. First, he circulated the calumny that Bernard had invented the patient. When it turned out the patient existed and a suspected perpetrator was arrested, Rokita cast around for laws Bernard might have broken. He came up with another false allegation — that she’d violated patient privacy and reporting laws — and petitioned the board to revoke her license. To do the job, Rokita sent the slimy-mouthed Voight. During the trial, many of his questions began, “Isn’t it true that …”

In another volley of questions, attempting to show that Bernard used the rape victim as a political tool, Voight declared, “No physician has been as brazen in pursuit of their own agenda.” “Brazen” is another one of those words, evoking “brazen hussy.” “She is unfit to practice medicine.” Morally unfit, that is.

Bernard is tough. She has withstood years of harassment and threats of violence against both her and her family. But several times during the hours of insinuation about her allegedly selfish, rash, and illegal conduct, the doctor was reduced to tears.

The IndyStar called the trial “persecution not prosecution.” After leading questions from a board member about the mushrooming media attention, including national news in which the alleged rapist’s identity and address were revealed, Bernard allowed that it might have been wise to describe her patient more elliptically — a sort of forced confession that she’d inadvertently harmed the child.

In the end, the board did not defrock the doctor. It did, however, find Bernard in violation of patient privacy laws and fined her $3,000 — permanent stains on her record. Arguably, her ordeal burnished her esteem among physicians, who decried her censure. Rokita did not break her.

But the champions of forced motherhood scored a point. The principled, trusted, and nationally respected Bernard was humiliated.

Dr. Leah Torres poses for a portrait at the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on March 15, 2022.

Photo: Allen G. Breed/AP

In 2020, Alabama abortion doctor Leah Torres was also punished by that state’s medical board for speaking out. In a moment of frustration two years earlier, asked by yet another troll if she heard the fetuses screaming when she aborted them, Torres sent off an angry tweet. Fired from a job in Utah, she had been invited to join the staff at the West Alabama Women’s Center, the only abortion provider for hundreds of miles around. Not two weeks into her employment, the state board charged her with lying on her medical license application about everything from her mental health to her intention to treat Covid-19 patients. She was also accused of making “public statements related to the practice of medicine which violate the high standards of honesty, diligence, prudence, and ethical integrity demanded from physicians licensed to practice in Alabama” — most likely a reference to the 2018 tweet.

“I felt like a child being reprimanded.”

In an unusual move, the state suspended Torres’s license during the investigation and through the end of the hearing. Seven months of earning nothing while incurring thousands of dollars in legal debt.

The committee that reviewed the board’s allegations did not concur with them. Nevertheless, they found that parts of Torres’s application “were suggestive of deceptive answers and a lack of ethical integrity.” She was required to take an ethics course and pay $4,000 in administrative fees to the board. Like Bernard’s, Torres’s reputation was tarred.

Also like Bernard, Torres was publicly humiliated. When investigators first came to her office to deliver the charges, they left with her physical license. “I felt like a child being reprimanded,” Torres told The Guardian.

Sometimes it appears that people in power are making their petitioners grovel simply because they can. Such nastiness was on display in May at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, during oral arguments regarding the case in which federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, raising the prospect of the abortion drug’s removal from the market nationally.

After a series of weird conjectures and uninformed queries, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod set upon Jessica Ellsworth, attorney for drug distributor Danco Laboratories, for perceived rudeness in the company’s brief. Introducing the scolding session with her opinion that the filings contained “rather unusual remarks” that “we don’t normally see from very esteemed counsel,” Elrod proceeded to quote from the brief: “defied longstanding precedent,” “an unprecedented judicial assault,” “the court’s relentless one-sided narrative.” She went on. 

Might the authors have been “under a rush,” perhaps “exhausted from this whole process,” the judge asked in sweetly assaultive tones. Did counsel “want to say anything about that?”

Ellsworth defended the language as reflecting the extraordinarily politicized nature of the ruling. Elrod persisted, offering alternative, politer phrasing. “Do you think it’s appropriate to attack the district court personally?” she prompted. “I wanted to give you a chance to comment on that.”

It was not an attack on the judge, Ellsworth replied. It was a critique of the court, the decision. But Elrod would not let up, and finally, the lawyer submitted. “I certainly think with more time, we may have ratcheted down some of that,” she said.

Penitence extracted from the prideful child, Judge James Ho took over with his own recital of sins, this time the FDA’s.

As both the method and the goal of misogynists, racists, abusers, tyrants, torturers, and the systems that uphold their power, humiliation can be its own reward. But it is not merely a social tool, and it does not act alone. Humiliation, along with shame and fear, are produced by and in turn fortify the laws that intrude on intimate life, control bodies, and punish those who resist. Together, restrictive laws and destructive emotions create the disciplinary environment that the right’s culture warriors have prayed and labored toward for decades.

Laws abridging bodily autonomy — bathroom patrols and genital inspections of student athletes, compulsory sonograms and lectures intended to get abortion patients to change their minds — intentionally humiliate their subjects, and always have. People seeking legal abortions in pre-Roe America, for instance, were required to seek approval from a (usually all-male) hospital board. Often, the winning plea was one of mental instability or suicidality — that is, self-incriminating evidence of the pregnant woman’s unfitness to mother.

Now activist public servants like Rokita and the members of politically appointed medical boards can turn to legislators to give their personal vendettas the force of law. Abortion remains legal in Indiana while a near-total ban is enjoined pending legal resolution, but confusion and fear about the law have reduced the number of abortions there precipitously. Alabama defines abortion as a Class A felony, carrying penalties of up to 99 years. West Alabama Women’s Center now provides comprehensive reproductive care, minus abortion, to low-income clients. Its staff is demoralized, and the clinic is struggling to stay afloat.

How do you fight an emotion? One way is to turn it around on its evokers.

A group of abortion rights comedians called Abortion Access Front have been staging political theater aimed at puncturing the confidence of the men legislating things they know nothing about: notably, women’s bodies. Their “Send in the Gowns” campaign encourages women to leave voicemails with as many gynecological details as possible, addressing the lawmakers as what they pretend to be. “Hi. Hello. This message is for Dr. Nutt,” begins Beth Stelling, calling South Carolina state Republican Rep. Roger Nutt. “I am lucky enough to have a womb [but] I do need advice because I don’t want to go to prison!” Her voice is both cheerful and earnest. “So the person I was making out with can’t stay hard with a condom, and it’s like, if I consent to the raw-dog activity and I get pregnant — I’m not on birth control, by the way, because it gave me anxiety, depression, dark patches of skin on my face …” In Tennessee, Abortion Access Front activists showed up at statehouse offices for medical “appointments” in hospital gowns.

In Florida, defenders of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights have taken to tossing large, white, women’s panties emblazoned with political messages — “pantygrams” — at those responsible for the excrement issuing from the state’s legislative body. One such missive missile, launched by Bonnie Patterson-James at a May protest, landed near a county sheriff, who claimed it bounced and hit him on the leg. Patterson-James was arrested and charged with felony battery of a law enforcement officer. She was also among the protesters who panty-pelted legislators from the gallery of the Florida House while they debated the bill banning gender-affirming care. Weeks after the event, several participants were arrested; Guerdy Remy, a nurse who has run for local office, turned herself in and was cuffed, booked, and locked up in county jail before being released on $500 bail six hours later.

The arrests were part of Florida’s crackdown on dissent, particularly at the Capitol, which accounted for over 30 arrests during the 60-day legislative session. “They’re arresting them for tossing panties,” commented a spokesperson for the Florida Freedom to Read Project. “Seems Ron DeSantis and his administration are the ones who have gotten their panties in a twist.”

One of the demonstrators told the Orlando Sentinel that the arrests were payback for embarrassing the governor and the legislature — and a sign of the action’s success. Embarrassment may seem a weak rejoinder to systematic humiliation. But it’s a form of refusal to kneel — and that is the only way to pull the powerful down from on high.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Judith Levine.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard in Indianapolis on Sept. 28, 2022.

Photo: Kaiti Sullivan for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Some three hours into the 14-hour inquisition of Dr. Caitlin Bernard before the Indiana physician’s licensing board, the assistant attorney general asked her an odd question: “Do you have a tattoo of a coat hanger that says, ‘Trust women,’ on your body?”

It was hard to tell which part offended him more: the coat hanger or “trust women.”

Bernard’s attorney objected to the question as irrelevant. And legally speaking, it was. For the record, Bernard does have such a tattoo, on her left foot, inked years ago to remind her of life in the bad old days. She is not ashamed of it.

But the question was certainly not an opening for the doctor to express pride in her profession and her advocacy of reproductive health care. It was not meant to seek information. Nor was the query a misstep. The interrogator, Cory Voight, was on a mission to prove this respected OB-GYN unfit to practice medicine. 

But, it seemed, even that was not enough. As the surrogate for his boss, the fiercely anti-abortion Indiana state Attorney General Todd Rokita, Voight wanted to tear the defendant down emotionally and in the eyes of the public. Asking a woman in a professional hearing about a mark on her body — using the word “body” — was part of a larger strategy, one long deployed by anti-abortion forces against abortion-seekers. Now they’re using it against providers and advocates as well. The strategy is humiliation.

Bernard’s trial, at the May 25 meeting of Indiana’s physician’s licensing board, was the latest chapter in Rokita’s yearlong smear campaign. In June 2022, just after the Dobbs decision triggered the misnamed “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban in Ohio, Bernard performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from that state. She told a local reporter the girl’s age, gestational stage, and state of origin, not her name or any other identifying details. She spoke again at a reproductive rights rally, warning that thousands of Indianans, including children, would be subject to similar, unnecessary trauma should the state pass an abortion ban in an upcoming special session. The case became national news. Bernard was celebrated as a hero.

Rokita was apoplectic. First, he circulated the calumny that Bernard had invented the patient. When it turned out the patient existed and a suspected perpetrator was arrested, Rokita cast around for laws Bernard might have broken. He came up with another false allegation — that she’d violated patient privacy and reporting laws — and petitioned the board to revoke her license. To do the job, Rokita sent the slimy-mouthed Voight. During the trial, many of his questions began, “Isn’t it true that …”

In another volley of questions, attempting to show that Bernard used the rape victim as a political tool, Voight declared, “No physician has been as brazen in pursuit of their own agenda.” “Brazen” is another one of those words, evoking “brazen hussy.” “She is unfit to practice medicine.” Morally unfit, that is.

Bernard is tough. She has withstood years of harassment and threats of violence against both her and her family. But several times during the hours of insinuation about her allegedly selfish, rash, and illegal conduct, the doctor was reduced to tears.

The IndyStar called the trial “persecution not prosecution.” After leading questions from a board member about the mushrooming media attention, including national news in which the alleged rapist’s identity and address were revealed, Bernard allowed that it might have been wise to describe her patient more elliptically — a sort of forced confession that she’d inadvertently harmed the child.

In the end, the board did not defrock the doctor. It did, however, find Bernard in violation of patient privacy laws and fined her $3,000 — permanent stains on her record. Arguably, her ordeal burnished her esteem among physicians, who decried her censure. Rokita did not break her.

But the champions of forced motherhood scored a point. The principled, trusted, and nationally respected Bernard was humiliated.

Dr. Leah Torres poses for a portrait at the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on March 15, 2022.

Photo: Allen G. Breed/AP

In 2020, Alabama abortion doctor Leah Torres was also punished by that state’s medical board for speaking out. In a moment of frustration two years earlier, asked by yet another troll if she heard the fetuses screaming when she aborted them, Torres sent off an angry tweet. Fired from a job in Utah, she had been invited to join the staff at the West Alabama Women’s Center, the only abortion provider for hundreds of miles around. Not two weeks into her employment, the state board charged her with lying on her medical license application about everything from her mental health to her intention to treat Covid-19 patients. She was also accused of making “public statements related to the practice of medicine which violate the high standards of honesty, diligence, prudence, and ethical integrity demanded from physicians licensed to practice in Alabama” — most likely a reference to the 2018 tweet.

“I felt like a child being reprimanded.”

In an unusual move, the state suspended Torres’s license during the investigation and through the end of the hearing. Seven months of earning nothing while incurring thousands of dollars in legal debt.

The committee that reviewed the board’s allegations did not concur with them. Nevertheless, they found that parts of Torres’s application “were suggestive of deceptive answers and a lack of ethical integrity.” She was required to take an ethics course and pay $4,000 in administrative fees to the board. Like Bernard’s, Torres’s reputation was tarred.

Also like Bernard, Torres was publicly humiliated. When investigators first came to her office to deliver the charges, they left with her physical license. “I felt like a child being reprimanded,” Torres told The Guardian.

Sometimes it appears that people in power are making their petitioners grovel simply because they can. Such nastiness was on display in May at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, during oral arguments regarding the case in which federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, raising the prospect of the abortion drug’s removal from the market nationally.

After a series of weird conjectures and uninformed queries, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod set upon Jessica Ellsworth, attorney for drug distributor Danco Laboratories, for perceived rudeness in the company’s brief. Introducing the scolding session with her opinion that the filings contained “rather unusual remarks” that “we don’t normally see from very esteemed counsel,” Elrod proceeded to quote from the brief: “defied longstanding precedent,” “an unprecedented judicial assault,” “the court’s relentless one-sided narrative.” She went on. 

Might the authors have been “under a rush,” perhaps “exhausted from this whole process,” the judge asked in sweetly assaultive tones. Did counsel “want to say anything about that?”

Ellsworth defended the language as reflecting the extraordinarily politicized nature of the ruling. Elrod persisted, offering alternative, politer phrasing. “Do you think it’s appropriate to attack the district court personally?” she prompted. “I wanted to give you a chance to comment on that.”

It was not an attack on the judge, Ellsworth replied. It was a critique of the court, the decision. But Elrod would not let up, and finally, the lawyer submitted. “I certainly think with more time, we may have ratcheted down some of that,” she said.

Penitence extracted from the prideful child, Judge James Ho took over with his own recital of sins, this time the FDA’s.

As both the method and the goal of misogynists, racists, abusers, tyrants, torturers, and the systems that uphold their power, humiliation can be its own reward. But it is not merely a social tool, and it does not act alone. Humiliation, along with shame and fear, are produced by and in turn fortify the laws that intrude on intimate life, control bodies, and punish those who resist. Together, restrictive laws and destructive emotions create the disciplinary environment that the right’s culture warriors have prayed and labored toward for decades.

Laws abridging bodily autonomy — bathroom patrols and genital inspections of student athletes, compulsory sonograms and lectures intended to get abortion patients to change their minds — intentionally humiliate their subjects, and always have. People seeking legal abortions in pre-Roe America, for instance, were required to seek approval from a (usually all-male) hospital board. Often, the winning plea was one of mental instability or suicidality — that is, self-incriminating evidence of the pregnant woman’s unfitness to mother.

Now activist public servants like Rokita and the members of politically appointed medical boards can turn to legislators to give their personal vendettas the force of law. Abortion remains legal in Indiana while a near-total ban is enjoined pending legal resolution, but confusion and fear about the law have reduced the number of abortions there precipitously. Alabama defines abortion as a Class A felony, carrying penalties of up to 99 years. West Alabama Women’s Center now provides comprehensive reproductive care, minus abortion, to low-income clients. Its staff is demoralized, and the clinic is struggling to stay afloat.

How do you fight an emotion? One way is to turn it around on its evokers.

A group of abortion rights comedians called Abortion Access Front have been staging political theater aimed at puncturing the confidence of the men legislating things they know nothing about: notably, women’s bodies. Their “Send in the Gowns” campaign encourages women to leave voicemails with as many gynecological details as possible, addressing the lawmakers as what they pretend to be. “Hi. Hello. This message is for Dr. Nutt,” begins Beth Stelling, calling South Carolina state Republican Rep. Roger Nutt. “I am lucky enough to have a womb [but] I do need advice because I don’t want to go to prison!” Her voice is both cheerful and earnest. “So the person I was making out with can’t stay hard with a condom, and it’s like, if I consent to the raw-dog activity and I get pregnant — I’m not on birth control, by the way, because it gave me anxiety, depression, dark patches of skin on my face …” In Tennessee, Abortion Access Front activists showed up at statehouse offices for medical “appointments” in hospital gowns.

In Florida, defenders of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights have taken to tossing large, white, women’s panties emblazoned with political messages — “pantygrams” — at those responsible for the excrement issuing from the state’s legislative body. One such missive missile, launched by Bonnie Patterson-James at a May protest, landed near a county sheriff, who claimed it bounced and hit him on the leg. Patterson-James was arrested and charged with felony battery of a law enforcement officer. She was also among the protesters who panty-pelted legislators from the gallery of the Florida House while they debated the bill banning gender-affirming care. Weeks after the event, several participants were arrested; Guerdy Remy, a nurse who has run for local office, turned herself in and was cuffed, booked, and locked up in county jail before being released on $500 bail six hours later.

The arrests were part of Florida’s crackdown on dissent, particularly at the Capitol, which accounted for over 30 arrests during the 60-day legislative session. “They’re arresting them for tossing panties,” commented a spokesperson for the Florida Freedom to Read Project. “Seems Ron DeSantis and his administration are the ones who have gotten their panties in a twist.”

One of the demonstrators told the Orlando Sentinel that the arrests were payback for embarrassing the governor and the legislature — and a sign of the action’s success. Embarrassment may seem a weak rejoinder to systematic humiliation. But it’s a form of refusal to kneel — and that is the only way to pull the powerful down from on high.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Judith Levine.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard in Indianapolis on Sept. 28, 2022.

Photo: Kaiti Sullivan for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Some three hours into the 14-hour inquisition of Dr. Caitlin Bernard before the Indiana physician’s licensing board, the assistant attorney general asked her an odd question: “Do you have a tattoo of a coat hanger that says, ‘Trust women,’ on your body?”

It was hard to tell which part offended him more: the coat hanger or “trust women.”

Bernard’s attorney objected to the question as irrelevant. And legally speaking, it was. For the record, Bernard does have such a tattoo, on her left foot, inked years ago to remind her of life in the bad old days. She is not ashamed of it.

But the question was certainly not an opening for the doctor to express pride in her profession and her advocacy of reproductive health care. It was not meant to seek information. Nor was the query a misstep. The interrogator, Cory Voight, was on a mission to prove this respected OB-GYN unfit to practice medicine. 

But, it seemed, even that was not enough. As the surrogate for his boss, the fiercely anti-abortion Indiana state Attorney General Todd Rokita, Voight wanted to tear the defendant down emotionally and in the eyes of the public. Asking a woman in a professional hearing about a mark on her body — using the word “body” — was part of a larger strategy, one long deployed by anti-abortion forces against abortion-seekers. Now they’re using it against providers and advocates as well. The strategy is humiliation.

Bernard’s trial, at the May 25 meeting of Indiana’s physician’s licensing board, was the latest chapter in Rokita’s yearlong smear campaign. In June 2022, just after the Dobbs decision triggered the misnamed “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban in Ohio, Bernard performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from that state. She told a local reporter the girl’s age, gestational stage, and state of origin, not her name or any other identifying details. She spoke again at a reproductive rights rally, warning that thousands of Indianans, including children, would be subject to similar, unnecessary trauma should the state pass an abortion ban in an upcoming special session. The case became national news. Bernard was celebrated as a hero.

Rokita was apoplectic. First, he circulated the calumny that Bernard had invented the patient. When it turned out the patient existed and a suspected perpetrator was arrested, Rokita cast around for laws Bernard might have broken. He came up with another false allegation — that she’d violated patient privacy and reporting laws — and petitioned the board to revoke her license. To do the job, Rokita sent the slimy-mouthed Voight. During the trial, many of his questions began, “Isn’t it true that …”

In another volley of questions, attempting to show that Bernard used the rape victim as a political tool, Voight declared, “No physician has been as brazen in pursuit of their own agenda.” “Brazen” is another one of those words, evoking “brazen hussy.” “She is unfit to practice medicine.” Morally unfit, that is.

Bernard is tough. She has withstood years of harassment and threats of violence against both her and her family. But several times during the hours of insinuation about her allegedly selfish, rash, and illegal conduct, the doctor was reduced to tears.

The IndyStar called the trial “persecution not prosecution.” After leading questions from a board member about the mushrooming media attention, including national news in which the alleged rapist’s identity and address were revealed, Bernard allowed that it might have been wise to describe her patient more elliptically — a sort of forced confession that she’d inadvertently harmed the child.

In the end, the board did not defrock the doctor. It did, however, find Bernard in violation of patient privacy laws and fined her $3,000 — permanent stains on her record. Arguably, her ordeal burnished her esteem among physicians, who decried her censure. Rokita did not break her.

But the champions of forced motherhood scored a point. The principled, trusted, and nationally respected Bernard was humiliated.

Dr. Leah Torres poses for a portrait at the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on March 15, 2022.

Photo: Allen G. Breed/AP

In 2020, Alabama abortion doctor Leah Torres was also punished by that state’s medical board for speaking out. In a moment of frustration two years earlier, asked by yet another troll if she heard the fetuses screaming when she aborted them, Torres sent off an angry tweet. Fired from a job in Utah, she had been invited to join the staff at the West Alabama Women’s Center, the only abortion provider for hundreds of miles around. Not two weeks into her employment, the state board charged her with lying on her medical license application about everything from her mental health to her intention to treat Covid-19 patients. She was also accused of making “public statements related to the practice of medicine which violate the high standards of honesty, diligence, prudence, and ethical integrity demanded from physicians licensed to practice in Alabama” — most likely a reference to the 2018 tweet.

“I felt like a child being reprimanded.”

In an unusual move, the state suspended Torres’s license during the investigation and through the end of the hearing. Seven months of earning nothing while incurring thousands of dollars in legal debt.

The committee that reviewed the board’s allegations did not concur with them. Nevertheless, they found that parts of Torres’s application “were suggestive of deceptive answers and a lack of ethical integrity.” She was required to take an ethics course and pay $4,000 in administrative fees to the board. Like Bernard’s, Torres’s reputation was tarred.

Also like Bernard, Torres was publicly humiliated. When investigators first came to her office to deliver the charges, they left with her physical license. “I felt like a child being reprimanded,” Torres told The Guardian.

Sometimes it appears that people in power are making their petitioners grovel simply because they can. Such nastiness was on display in May at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, during oral arguments regarding the case in which federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago, raising the prospect of the abortion drug’s removal from the market nationally.

After a series of weird conjectures and uninformed queries, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod set upon Jessica Ellsworth, attorney for drug distributor Danco Laboratories, for perceived rudeness in the company’s brief. Introducing the scolding session with her opinion that the filings contained “rather unusual remarks” that “we don’t normally see from very esteemed counsel,” Elrod proceeded to quote from the brief: “defied longstanding precedent,” “an unprecedented judicial assault,” “the court’s relentless one-sided narrative.” She went on. 

Might the authors have been “under a rush,” perhaps “exhausted from this whole process,” the judge asked in sweetly assaultive tones. Did counsel “want to say anything about that?”

Ellsworth defended the language as reflecting the extraordinarily politicized nature of the ruling. Elrod persisted, offering alternative, politer phrasing. “Do you think it’s appropriate to attack the district court personally?” she prompted. “I wanted to give you a chance to comment on that.”

It was not an attack on the judge, Ellsworth replied. It was a critique of the court, the decision. But Elrod would not let up, and finally, the lawyer submitted. “I certainly think with more time, we may have ratcheted down some of that,” she said.

Penitence extracted from the prideful child, Judge James Ho took over with his own recital of sins, this time the FDA’s.

As both the method and the goal of misogynists, racists, abusers, tyrants, torturers, and the systems that uphold their power, humiliation can be its own reward. But it is not merely a social tool, and it does not act alone. Humiliation, along with shame and fear, are produced by and in turn fortify the laws that intrude on intimate life, control bodies, and punish those who resist. Together, restrictive laws and destructive emotions create the disciplinary environment that the right’s culture warriors have prayed and labored toward for decades.

Laws abridging bodily autonomy — bathroom patrols and genital inspections of student athletes, compulsory sonograms and lectures intended to get abortion patients to change their minds — intentionally humiliate their subjects, and always have. People seeking legal abortions in pre-Roe America, for instance, were required to seek approval from a (usually all-male) hospital board. Often, the winning plea was one of mental instability or suicidality — that is, self-incriminating evidence of the pregnant woman’s unfitness to mother.

Now activist public servants like Rokita and the members of politically appointed medical boards can turn to legislators to give their personal vendettas the force of law. Abortion remains legal in Indiana while a near-total ban is enjoined pending legal resolution, but confusion and fear about the law have reduced the number of abortions there precipitously. Alabama defines abortion as a Class A felony, carrying penalties of up to 99 years. West Alabama Women’s Center now provides comprehensive reproductive care, minus abortion, to low-income clients. Its staff is demoralized, and the clinic is struggling to stay afloat.

How do you fight an emotion? One way is to turn it around on its evokers.

A group of abortion rights comedians called Abortion Access Front have been staging political theater aimed at puncturing the confidence of the men legislating things they know nothing about: notably, women’s bodies. Their “Send in the Gowns” campaign encourages women to leave voicemails with as many gynecological details as possible, addressing the lawmakers as what they pretend to be. “Hi. Hello. This message is for Dr. Nutt,” begins Beth Stelling, calling South Carolina state Republican Rep. Roger Nutt. “I am lucky enough to have a womb [but] I do need advice because I don’t want to go to prison!” Her voice is both cheerful and earnest. “So the person I was making out with can’t stay hard with a condom, and it’s like, if I consent to the raw-dog activity and I get pregnant — I’m not on birth control, by the way, because it gave me anxiety, depression, dark patches of skin on my face …” In Tennessee, Abortion Access Front activists showed up at statehouse offices for medical “appointments” in hospital gowns.

In Florida, defenders of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights have taken to tossing large, white, women’s panties emblazoned with political messages — “pantygrams” — at those responsible for the excrement issuing from the state’s legislative body. One such missive missile, launched by Bonnie Patterson-James at a May protest, landed near a county sheriff, who claimed it bounced and hit him on the leg. Patterson-James was arrested and charged with felony battery of a law enforcement officer. She was also among the protesters who panty-pelted legislators from the gallery of the Florida House while they debated the bill banning gender-affirming care. Weeks after the event, several participants were arrested; Guerdy Remy, a nurse who has run for local office, turned herself in and was cuffed, booked, and locked up in county jail before being released on $500 bail six hours later.

The arrests were part of Florida’s crackdown on dissent, particularly at the Capitol, which accounted for over 30 arrests during the 60-day legislative session. “They’re arresting them for tossing panties,” commented a spokesperson for the Florida Freedom to Read Project. “Seems Ron DeSantis and his administration are the ones who have gotten their panties in a twist.”

One of the demonstrators told the Orlando Sentinel that the arrests were payback for embarrassing the governor and the legislature — and a sign of the action’s success. Embarrassment may seem a weak rejoinder to systematic humiliation. But it’s a form of refusal to kneel — and that is the only way to pull the powerful down from on high.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Judith Levine.

I don’t know if there was any specific thing that inspired me to start making art, but as a kid, I think making art was definitely an outlet to create narratives. I was definitely a kid that played pretend a lot or had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to be or what I wish I could be—a lot of dreams. I think making art was definitely an outlet for that, to make what I had in my head solid on paper.

Do you feel like your art helps you discover more about yourself as a person?

Yes, absolutely. I think without art, I wouldn’t have discovered or had the outlet to really introspect that much about myself. A lot of the art that I made growing up was drawings of entwined friendship between girls, very similar to the subject matter that I have now. Basically, a world that I really wanted, but I guess I didn’t really understand the compulsion at the time and what that meant to me. Over time, and even now, I still learn so much about myself, and as I grow to understand more things about myself, I feel like my work also informs that, and it feeds into one another. I learn about myself through making work, but as I learn about myself, my work changes.

mottled peach skin, crushed spider eye, do you know the smell of your own skin?

face full of hurt, bonneted hag, do you know the touch of your own hands?

Yeah, that makes sense. Art is definitely a good tool for that. At least for me, I don’t know any other way.

Exactly. To explore those things. To process those things.

You said you started off with drawing, but you explore so many different mediums [illustration, printmaking, animation, sculpture, candlemaking and, most recently, tattooing.] Is it important for you to have a variety, depending on what’s going on in your life? How do you decide that you want to explore certain things at certain times?

Drawing has always been the foundation of where I came from, but a lot of what I’m interested in is world building and a more holistic approach to storytelling that’s immersive. Going through art college really helped expand that by giving me space to experiment with fibers or sculpture or stop motion. Having different outlets to build that world is important to me, but also the specific things that I use to create those worlds are also important to me. Fibers and crafts, and pulling from things that are more accessible to domestic spaces is really important to me—like candlemaking even. I’ve never really explored painting, for example, because it just didn’t seem right for my work.

tender house

ritual punishment 2

Fiber art and candlemaking allow you to use the resources you have around you?

Exactly. Certain things that I gravitate towards are very domestic or considered traditionally feminine works and I think that adds to the tapestry of my work in some ways.

A world is a combination of so many different things, so it makes sense that using all that you have around you lends itself to building an entire world and narrative.

Escapism was always very important to me as a kid, so being able to fulfill that as an adult is kind of cool for me. Even in my space, like in my apartment, it’s like me fulfilling the fantasy of that.

Would you say that the idea of playing and allowing yourself to explore things in an uninhibited way is something that’s important to you?

Oh man. I wish I could explore things uninhibitedly. In some ways I want to have fun with my work, and candles are a great outlet for that because they’re more craft-based and more fun for me to do. Same with baking. Baking is a fun activity for me that I can be a little bit more loose with. So in some ways it’s important for me to have certain things like that, but with really meticulous things like drawing or sculpture, and especially with tattooing, I’m pretty strict about the process. I’m strict about perfectionism in my work, which is something I try to break out of and question myself about. Having certain outlets and crafts that are more fun for me is important. Candlemaking and baking and playing with polymer clay. That’s super fun.

birthday candle for Aki

birthday candle for Mort

I feel like it kind of massages your brain or something, and resets you in a certain way.

Yeah, exactly.

You mentioned you’re very meticulous about your tattooing, and I have gotten a couple tattoos from you, so I know the amount of detail you put in is amazing. How do you feel the relationship between your illustrations and your tattooing fit together? Was it hard to translate one practice to the other?

I thought it would be harder than it was. I mean, it’s still a really difficult process, of course, not to be like, “Yeah, it’s super easy,” but it reminds me a lot of printmaking in the way that everything has to be done in a certain way, but then you have the added pressure of doing it on somebody’s body and there’s no way to go back. It’s really important to understand the tools that you’re using and also to accept that things are going to look different on skin than it’s going to look on paper, and having your expectations managed in that way.

You tattoo a lot of queer and trans people, how does that feel for you? I’m sure it must feel good as a queer person.

It does feel really awesome. Well, I started tattooing myself, and the feeling of having agency over my body and having something on my body that I know I wanted there, and that I put it there, feels really good. Being able to give that to my community is really nice. It feels really good that other people feel that way about my work and that it makes them feel a little bit more at home in their bodies.

I feel like the time and care that you put into making the whole session comfortable is another form of art in itself.

That was also very important to me. When I decided to start tattooing people, I didn’t want to recycle the same sort of sterile, awkward experience. Tattoo bros can be a little bit rough and uncomfy and I wanted to make people feel like they can say, “I want to move the stencil one millimeter.” or “Oh, I want to have a snack now.” or “Oh, can you give me a blanket?” I want to be able to be like, “You good? You want a blanket? You want a snack? You want different music?”

I’m curious if you have an ideal world in mind when it comes to the queer art-making community? What would you like to see?

Honestly, in some ways, I feel like I am living in a very ideal queer community, or in my mind, ideal within my friend group. We take care of each other and we support each other in our different interests. We are able to be there for each other. Obviously my friend group doesn’t represent the larger queer community, but it would be cool to extend that to people. I want the whole queer community to have that, just people supporting each other and calling each other out on their shit. That’s one of the reasons why I insist on keeping a sliding scale for the trans community, because I want to be able to extend that care to other people. If they want to feel good in their bodies just for a second with a tattoo, I want that for them.

Queerness is a major theme throughout your work. The girls that you draw are very specific and very intimate, and I know a layer of your work is in the context of anti-LGBTQ attitudes in Malaysia. How does your lesbian identity inform your work?

The anti-LGBTQ attitudes where I grew up in Malaysia was definitely the reason why I felt a need for escapism throughout my childhood. The current gender structures are put in place by our white colonizers, but that has been forgotten, so we just continue this violence thinking it is part of our own history and Malaysian identity.

Let’s talk about the girls. They have been a constant, and throughout my visual language, they’ve always been there. For me, one of the ways of processing my identity and the way that I want to present myself, or how I feel internally, or how I present myself in my gender—I process that a lot through the girls, and I think that’s why they all have similar faces, because I do base a lot of their expressions on pictures of my face.

With my lesbian and gender-fluid identity, I guess I think about these girls as hags. The hag imagery is so important to me because with lesbians, or I don’t know if I’m allowed to say dykes. Honestly, I have a hard time with the word lesbian, but I do strongly identify with the word dyke or hag because it’s sort of this feral, primal being, who lives outside of expected gender chores. But also she’s sexy and sexual, but it’s selfish and devious, but also she’s not sexy, which makes her a hag. Being selfish about your own gender and sexuality, is very haggish and devious, and I like claiming that alongside being a dyke.

worry

Strange Harvest show title piece

I’ve never really heard “hag” as a descriptor for a dyke, but I have an image in my head of what that looks like. How would you describe a hag?

In my mind, the word lesbian feels like it could still be expected to follow cis/heteronormative beauty standards or whatever, but a hag and a dyke—that’s true sexiness to me. Because she’s a fucking hag, she is unafraid of looking however she feels most fully realized. I don’t know. She dresses and presents herself as whatever she wants, regardless of whatever is expected of her. She could wear a lace bonnet and she could wear a little fucking negligee, or she could wear fucking anything.

She’s just a hag.

She’s a fucking hag. She doesn’t care. She’s here to fuck, but also to make candles. Yeah, so they’re hags to me because they are still sexual beings, but they keep that to themselves almost in a selfish way. They are selfish.

Do you feel like that’s an inner power type of thing?

It’s an inner power, but it’s also this grotesque beauty. Selfishness is synonymous with haggish-ness because a hag extends care and pleasure to herself without the intention of continuing the cycle of reproduction.

it was humid and you smelled of palm oil

I feel like the way that you describe the girls that you draw makes a lot of sense, and coming from a place where that wasn’t always accepted, it makes sense that you naturally went down that route.

I think when I was drawing them as a kid, they were very much how I would think a sexy person would present themselves, not conventionally pretty, but pretty in a way that I find interesting. The hag imagery is really important to me.

Forever Friend

You moved from Malaysia in 2014, and you went to school in Kentucky, and then you moved to Chicago, where you live now. Do you feel like your work has changed being in situations where that might not have always been accepted? How do you feel having that sort of freedom to explore more changed the way that you make art?

Yeah, it’s definitely changed a lot. I think looking back at my old work from middle school and high school, it’s definitely more repressed lesbian, “Oh, this poor girl, what are you doing?” But since then, obviously my skills have improved. I’m able to draw things that I actually want to draw and edit myself better. Those are things that just come with growing up as an artist. The subject matter has definitely changed, because it does reflect my understanding of myself almost.

Earlier on in my illustration work, you can tell that I was more concerned about drawing things that are subjectively pretty and beautiful. I like beauty in my work and I love ornateness, but I think now I am more interested in depicting things that are pretty, but also still representative of things that are unconventionally pretty—facial hair or bodies with bruises or mottled faces and being okay with deviating from the very illustrations that I started with earlier on in my artistic career.

Perempuan Minyak

That must be cool to see the progression of you changing as a person, and how your art has also changed alongside that.

Being more confident in my own body allowed me to be more confident in depicting things that aren’t conventionally pretty.

I think hags are so beautiful and sexy, but they’re not conventionally beautiful and sexy, but I don’t even know what that means anymore. What is conventional beauty? Maybe my mind is so warped in thinking that old saggy, sexy bodies are cool and awesome.

What has been the most rewarding part of your creative process and getting to the point where you are right now?

There’s so many. One of the things is being able to know myself better and being able to have an outlet to introspect. But another thing is being able to tattoo people and making them feel more at home in their body. That makes me feel really, really good. I mean, it feels good to tattoo myself, but it feels amazing to be able to give that to other people. Getting to that point, being able to have the confidence to say, “Yeah, I want to tattoo myself, and other people, and feel good in my body, and unencumbered, and have agency over my body, and allow other people to have that too,” is the most rewarding thing.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jess Shoman.

Yeh said tattoos were previously stigmatized in Taiwan, where they are closely linked in people's minds with organized crime, but under the influence of indigenous peoples' culture, they are now increasingly seen as an expression of culture, art and personal freedom.

U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao said the law is highly paternalistic, putting the state in loco parentis.

"This is an overreach, a paternalistic approach in which the government takes the place of the parents," Teng said. "Tattoos aren't particularly harmful, so the government is going too far, trying to control them."

"It would be better coming from the parents, through education and persuasion."

Taiwan-based dissident Zhou Shuguang said the Chinese government could fear that people will use tattoos to show allegiance to something other than the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or use it as a form of political protest.

"They probably fear that minors' bodies will become taken over by various cultural symbols, making it harder for the CCP to brainwash them," Zhou told RFA. "Cultural icons, cartoon characters and writing are all carriers of culture."

"Minors could be branded for life, with the symbols hard to erase," he said. "The other thing they could be worried about is that people will use tattoos as tokens of recognition when forming groups, the thing that the CCP fears most, and has to break up."

Teng agreed.

"For example, if someone gets the numbers 8964 tattooed on their body [a covert reference to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre], just putting those numbers together is going to be trouble," he said. "China won't allow those numbers to be posted online."

He said the move was part and parcel of China's "patriotic education" program in schools.

"Chinese education is actually a form of brainwashing, and these controls on minors' freedom of speech by the entire education system is doing great harm to their minds," Teng said. "There may be no bloodshed involved, but a lifetime of [psychological] harm instead."

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa.

Samantha Rehark: We combine one spontaneous drawing made by me with one by Angel. We created the project as a traveling, live series where we host a party and give clients—here they are querents—a reading and a tattoo of whatever card they pulled. I hand-poke some lines and Angel does the others with a machine.

How did your creative collaboration begin?

Angel Garcia: We met in 2017 at a residency called The Golden Dome School, which is dedicated to the intersections of art, metaphysics, and ecology. Each session is themed around a different tarot card from the Major Arcana and ours was The Lovers. We realized that we were both tattooers and had similar interests by the end of an intense week of creating and meditating.

SR: We kept in touch and planned to do another residency, this time for the Hermit card. We had a crazy day of texting where we came up with the whole idea: spontaneous, oracle mystery tattoos made together. Out in California we started doing drawings at the same time of day: one for when we got up in the morning, one midday, and one at the end of the day. We actually were sharing a bed so we would get up at 3 a.m.—the witching hour—and do one. But we weren’t ever showing each other our drawings at the time.

AG: We ended up with 22 pairs of drawings, a happy accident because that’s the same amount of cards as there are in the Major Arcana. From there we went to L.A. and had the first Body Spells event at a friend’s house. It was super DIY. We weren’t sure anybody would show up. This was before we had an Instagram account; it was purely word of mouth. And these two people who were total strangers came and it was amazing. I feel like I’ll love them forever. They’re a part of the deck forever.

SR: To continue building the deck and eventually have 78 cards, like the tarot, now we make drawings on every new moon and every full moon. The moment it goes exact we just stop whatever we’re doing or we wake up from sleep and make a drawing. Every other month or so we workshop the drawings, find what fits, and make them into cards.

I’m trying to imagine you picking up a pen and paper off the floor in the middle of the night and creating an image. What is the key to making these drawings?

AG: My best tool is my intuition. As soon as I start to overthink it, I just stop. It’s supposed to be a second of drawing, a moment in time.

SR: Sometimes they’re silly or ugly or stuff that cracks us up. Sometimes we do things that are oddly synchronous. Of course we’re drawing all the time and working with certain imagery because of our individual tattoo practices, and that can come into it. But we’re trying to be as free as possible. It’s honestly very dreamy; we’re pulling the subconscious into the light. When we get together and overlay them, that’s when we think about them a little more—how they work as a composition, how it will work as a tattoo. But throughout the whole process we’re extremely serious about not attaching any meaning to the card.

AG: No meaning, no interpretation. When we’re drawing the card it’s about the image. It’s really hard but we want to surrender to surprise.

Why is that important to you?

SR: The mysteriousness is the whole point. You’re pulling an oracular message from the ether that’s going to end up on your body. We’re the stewards of that image. Ultimately it’s something that you are going to have a relationship with forever.

AG: It’s important not to impose any of our person onto the card when the person that the card belongs to is there. We want the image to belong to them.

SR: With certain magical rituals, pop culture often leaves out the part where you need to do a little homework. You get a tarot reading and you have a lot to think about afterwards, your problems aren’t solved. Body Spells is similar; it’s your responsibility to exist with it and to work with what comes up. We’re not trying to provide a spiritual service. If you end up having a spiritual relationship with your tattoo, or any other tattoo you have, I think that’s awesome and really personal.

I’m curious how tarot, or mysticism, entered your lives.

SR: I’ve always been fascinated with the mysterious nature of objects like tarot cards and sacred tools, which perhaps is partly rooted in my religious upbringing. My exploration of these objects has been part of how I’ve navigated my relationship to ritual practices as an adult.

AG: I’m a super nerd about mythology. I have a lot of the information that’s in the story of the cards and my approach to reading them is pretty academic. For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in mystical practice. My family is from Cuba and we used to watch this astrologer on TV, Walter Mercado. A friend gave me my first tarot deck when I went to college. It was chakra-themed, very funny illustrations. I mean, it was my first deck. It was a good one. I lost it, actually.

SR: My first deck I lost, too. I buried it in the sand at the beach and totally forgot about it. I felt fine about it. Sometimes they’re just done with you.

Hearing you talk, you’re clearly on the same page but like you’re reading from your own copies of the book. How is Body Spells different from, or how does it interact with, your solo practices?

SR: It’s really fun to play and to collaborate with each other. We always approach tattoos as a collaboration with the client.

AG: Body Spells feels more free. We’re not trying to fit the drawings onto a flash sheet, we’re not imagining how they’d look on an arm. There’s no classical or archetypal imagery associated with them. They are coming completely out of nowhere. It’s so intuitive that sometimes we don’t even digest what it is that we’ve drawn until we look at it again when the card’s pulled.

SR: There’s intuition in the inking process, too. When we’re talking to the querent maybe we’ll notice that their body language is hovering around their chest and we’ll suggest placing it there. Maybe they’re radiating the color red and we could incorporate that.

I remember red laces on a boot from the Body Spells Instagram. So many tattoo artists rely heavily on that platform to promote their work. I mean, that’s how I found both of you. What is it like to talk about magic and ritual inside digital spaces?

SR: We’re always trying not to come off as… “super cute.” Is it bad that I said that?

AG: [laughs] We both get that a lot. People saying, “Oh, cute project!” And we’re like, “No! This project is actually really hard and complicated!” It can be dark, it can be about facing a fear. The image that you see on Instagram doesn’t replace the experience. There’s so much deeper work that’s happening when the querent pulls the card or when we’re doing the drawing. It’s tough to try to represent that.

SR: The digital platform has obviously been awesome for both of our careers. We get this reach to all these people that want to make art together. We just want to make sure that we don’t seem as if we’re providing a really pretty package that you can unwrap and we give you a magical answer.

You also never know what the algorithm is doing behind the scenes to change your audience. Maybe only women of a certain age range are seeing our posts. We’re working on a website as an archive and a tool for explaining Body Spells. There’s something about Instagram that’s about consumption, like “I’m just shoppin’ around,” and a site conveys more of an art piece.

What were your paths to tattooing, an art form that I think is inherently less focused on commodity than many other mediums?

AG: I had a really traditional tattoo apprenticeship at a street shop in Miami—classic American, Japanese, tribal styles. I painted the walls, did the appointments, swept the floor. I tattooed melons until I annoyed them enough to let me pick up a machine. I’ve been tattooing professionally for seven years now. I love it. I think it’s like the proletariat or the democratic way to share your artwork. I love working with people and their bodies. I got weird with it and found my own relationship to tattooing that my apprenticeship didn’t engender in me. I thought I was entering into an industry that was breaking all the rules, until I realized that there were actually so many rules, so much gatekeeping. I guess what Sam and I saw in each other is that we’re trying to break the rules in the same way.

SR: My background is totally different. I went to art school; I feel like everybody just tattoos each other in art school. I had a lot of anxiety then and I didn’t love to party and I didn’t smoke cigarettes and felt like I missed out on a lot of social opportunities. So I was always looking for avenues to make friends. I tattooed someone for fun, a chubby dolphin, and it turned out really good. It took awhile before I took it seriously but I did start packing up a little stick-and-poke kit wherever I went. Eventually I tattooed out of a private studio but I was also a theatrical makeup artist, so nightlife drained most of my energy. Between the two, I discovered that I love working with people’s bodies. I think it’s endlessly fascinating. Skin is crazy, bodies are wild, people love to see themselves transformed. People love the chance to talk about transformation. For a long time I thought I needed to go back to school to be an art therapist or something. I’ve kind of checked that box; what I needed was to have these conversations with people about themselves.

You started as long-distance friends and now you’re sharing a studio space. How has your relationship shifted?

AG: Our collaboration used to be so much figuring out when we would cross paths next. Which actually did happen a lot. But since I moved to New York last year we don’t have to make big decisions over long phone calls.

SR: Right before COVID happened, we were like, what should we name the spot? How much do we want to spend on materials and rent? Of course all that’s important but our perspective had to suddenly change. It became impossible to look for a space let alone know if we could ever tattoo again. It was even hard for me to draw flash. So Body Spells started taking up more mental space for us. We developed a language around it and that became the meat of our physical space (which right now is a private studio).

AG: We want the new space to become like a third-party collaborator, the manifestation of the work we put into the project.

What does your ideal working space look like?

AG: A window is important.

SR: The drawings themselves literally happen on a piece of paper by the bed or on the back of a receipt with a crayon. It’s just wherever we are. So we always come together with this pile of weird shit. We need a space to spread out. We recently upgraded and got iPads, but we used to require a light table in our working space. We overlap our images on there and Xerox them. By coincidence we have a similar way of sketching and refining. We’ve guested at shops that literally didn’t have a pen and we were like, “Uh, how do you guys draw your tattoos?”

Once the card is made, how is it determined who tattoos which parts?

SK: I think we’re probably unique in that we like to abandon ownership. I could see that not working for other artists.

AG: Often I’m tattooing something that Sam drew and she’s tattooing something that I drew, which is so cool to see how the lines change with the method. The whole thing is there’s really no separation after the card is made. Body Spells is the author.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Greta Rainbow.

Samantha Rehark: We combine one spontaneous drawing made by me with one by Angel. We created the project as a traveling, live series where we host a party and give clients—here they are querents—a reading and a tattoo of whatever card they pulled. I hand-poke some lines and Angel does the others with a machine.

How did your creative collaboration begin?

Angel Garcia: We met in 2017 at a residency called The Golden Dome School, which is dedicated to the intersections of art, metaphysics, and ecology. Each session is themed around a different tarot card from the Major Arcana and ours was The Lovers. We realized that we were both tattooers and had similar interests by the end of an intense week of creating and meditating.

SR: We kept in touch and planned to do another residency, this time for the Hermit card. We had a crazy day of texting where we came up with the whole idea: spontaneous, oracle mystery tattoos made together. Out in California we started doing drawings at the same time of day: one for when we got up in the morning, one midday, and one at the end of the day. We actually were sharing a bed so we would get up at 3 a.m.—the witching hour—and do one. But we weren’t ever showing each other our drawings at the time.

AG: We ended up with 22 pairs of drawings, a happy accident because that’s the same amount of cards as there are in the Major Arcana. From there we went to L.A. and had the first Body Spells event at a friend’s house. It was super DIY. We weren’t sure anybody would show up. This was before we had an Instagram account; it was purely word of mouth. And these two people who were total strangers came and it was amazing. I feel like I’ll love them forever. They’re a part of the deck forever.

SR: To continue building the deck and eventually have 78 cards, like the tarot, now we make drawings on every new moon and every full moon. The moment it goes exact we just stop whatever we’re doing or we wake up from sleep and make a drawing. Every other month or so we workshop the drawings, find what fits, and make them into cards.

I’m trying to imagine you picking up a pen and paper off the floor in the middle of the night and creating an image. What is the key to making these drawings?

AG: My best tool is my intuition. As soon as I start to overthink it, I just stop. It’s supposed to be a second of drawing, a moment in time.

SR: Sometimes they’re silly or ugly or stuff that cracks us up. Sometimes we do things that are oddly synchronous. Of course we’re drawing all the time and working with certain imagery because of our individual tattoo practices, and that can come into it. But we’re trying to be as free as possible. It’s honestly very dreamy; we’re pulling the subconscious into the light. When we get together and overlay them, that’s when we think about them a little more—how they work as a composition, how it will work as a tattoo. But throughout the whole process we’re extremely serious about not attaching any meaning to the card.

AG: No meaning, no interpretation. When we’re drawing the card it’s about the image. It’s really hard but we want to surrender to surprise.

Why is that important to you?

SR: The mysteriousness is the whole point. You’re pulling an oracular message from the ether that’s going to end up on your body. We’re the stewards of that image. Ultimately it’s something that you are going to have a relationship with forever.

AG: It’s important not to impose any of our person onto the card when the person that the card belongs to is there. We want the image to belong to them.

SR: With certain magical rituals, pop culture often leaves out the part where you need to do a little homework. You get a tarot reading and you have a lot to think about afterwards, your problems aren’t solved. Body Spells is similar; it’s your responsibility to exist with it and to work with what comes up. We’re not trying to provide a spiritual service. If you end up having a spiritual relationship with your tattoo, or any other tattoo you have, I think that’s awesome and really personal.

I’m curious how tarot, or mysticism, entered your lives.

SR: I’ve always been fascinated with the mysterious nature of objects like tarot cards and sacred tools, which perhaps is partly rooted in my religious upbringing. My exploration of these objects has been part of how I’ve navigated my relationship to ritual practices as an adult.

AG: I’m a super nerd about mythology. I have a lot of the information that’s in the story of the cards and my approach to reading them is pretty academic. For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in mystical practice. My family is from Cuba and we used to watch this astrologer on TV, Walter Mercado. A friend gave me my first tarot deck when I went to college. It was chakra-themed, very funny illustrations. I mean, it was my first deck. It was a good one. I lost it, actually.

SR: My first deck I lost, too. I buried it in the sand at the beach and totally forgot about it. I felt fine about it. Sometimes they’re just done with you.

Hearing you talk, you’re clearly on the same page but like you’re reading from your own copies of the book. How is Body Spells different from, or how does it interact with, your solo practices?

SR: It’s really fun to play and to collaborate with each other. We always approach tattoos as a collaboration with the client.

AG: Body Spells feels more free. We’re not trying to fit the drawings onto a flash sheet, we’re not imagining how they’d look on an arm. There’s no classical or archetypal imagery associated with them. They are coming completely out of nowhere. It’s so intuitive that sometimes we don’t even digest what it is that we’ve drawn until we look at it again when the card’s pulled.

SR: There’s intuition in the inking process, too. When we’re talking to the querent maybe we’ll notice that their body language is hovering around their chest and we’ll suggest placing it there. Maybe they’re radiating the color red and we could incorporate that.

I remember red laces on a boot from the Body Spells Instagram. So many tattoo artists rely heavily on that platform to promote their work. I mean, that’s how I found both of you. What is it like to talk about magic and ritual inside digital spaces?

SR: We’re always trying not to come off as… “super cute.” Is it bad that I said that?

AG: [laughs] We both get that a lot. People saying, “Oh, cute project!” And we’re like, “No! This project is actually really hard and complicated!” It can be dark, it can be about facing a fear. The image that you see on Instagram doesn’t replace the experience. There’s so much deeper work that’s happening when the querent pulls the card or when we’re doing the drawing. It’s tough to try to represent that.

SR: The digital platform has obviously been awesome for both of our careers. We get this reach to all these people that want to make art together. We just want to make sure that we don’t seem as if we’re providing a really pretty package that you can unwrap and we give you a magical answer.

You also never know what the algorithm is doing behind the scenes to change your audience. Maybe only women of a certain age range are seeing our posts. We’re working on a website as an archive and a tool for explaining Body Spells. There’s something about Instagram that’s about consumption, like “I’m just shoppin’ around,” and a site conveys more of an art piece.

What were your paths to tattooing, an art form that I think is inherently less focused on commodity than many other mediums?

AG: I had a really traditional tattoo apprenticeship at a street shop in Miami—classic American, Japanese, tribal styles. I painted the walls, did the appointments, swept the floor. I tattooed melons until I annoyed them enough to let me pick up a machine. I’ve been tattooing professionally for seven years now. I love it. I think it’s like the proletariat or the democratic way to share your artwork. I love working with people and their bodies. I got weird with it and found my own relationship to tattooing that my apprenticeship didn’t engender in me. I thought I was entering into an industry that was breaking all the rules, until I realized that there were actually so many rules, so much gatekeeping. I guess what Sam and I saw in each other is that we’re trying to break the rules in the same way.

SR: My background is totally different. I went to art school; I feel like everybody just tattoos each other in art school. I had a lot of anxiety then and I didn’t love to party and I didn’t smoke cigarettes and felt like I missed out on a lot of social opportunities. So I was always looking for avenues to make friends. I tattooed someone for fun, a chubby dolphin, and it turned out really good. It took awhile before I took it seriously but I did start packing up a little stick-and-poke kit wherever I went. Eventually I tattooed out of a private studio but I was also a theatrical makeup artist, so nightlife drained most of my energy. Between the two, I discovered that I love working with people’s bodies. I think it’s endlessly fascinating. Skin is crazy, bodies are wild, people love to see themselves transformed. People love the chance to talk about transformation. For a long time I thought I needed to go back to school to be an art therapist or something. I’ve kind of checked that box; what I needed was to have these conversations with people about themselves.

You started as long-distance friends and now you’re sharing a studio space. How has your relationship shifted?

AG: Our collaboration used to be so much figuring out when we would cross paths next. Which actually did happen a lot. But since I moved to New York last year we don’t have to make big decisions over long phone calls.

SR: Right before COVID happened, we were like, what should we name the spot? How much do we want to spend on materials and rent? Of course all that’s important but our perspective had to suddenly change. It became impossible to look for a space let alone know if we could ever tattoo again. It was even hard for me to draw flash. So Body Spells started taking up more mental space for us. We developed a language around it and that became the meat of our physical space (which right now is a private studio).

AG: We want the new space to become like a third-party collaborator, the manifestation of the work we put into the project.

What does your ideal working space look like?

AG: A window is important.

SR: The drawings themselves literally happen on a piece of paper by the bed or on the back of a receipt with a crayon. It’s just wherever we are. So we always come together with this pile of weird shit. We need a space to spread out. We recently upgraded and got iPads, but we used to require a light table in our working space. We overlap our images on there and Xerox them. By coincidence we have a similar way of sketching and refining. We’ve guested at shops that literally didn’t have a pen and we were like, “Uh, how do you guys draw your tattoos?”

Once the card is made, how is it determined who tattoos which parts?

SK: I think we’re probably unique in that we like to abandon ownership. I could see that not working for other artists.

AG: Often I’m tattooing something that Sam drew and she’s tattooing something that I drew, which is so cool to see how the lines change with the method. The whole thing is there’s really no separation after the card is made. Body Spells is the author.

Right now I am really trying to draw less for tattoos. Tattooing requires a certain amount of refinement. To get myself in the drawing zone, I’ve been trying to do a daily practice of just drawing while I journal without expectation of the outcome. I find that really freeing and it also adds to my flow when I’m drawing for a tattoo. Just allowing yourself that space to play almost allows yourself the space to be serious and concentrated, letting both sides of yourself live that way.

Honestly, at this point in time, it takes me a very long time to prepare for a tattoo. I think that’s because I lack a bit of consistency when it comes to my own personal care. [I] eat a good breakfast. I show my designs the day of, but I make sure to have a very, very thorough consult.

Sometimes people make fun of me, being like, “Your consults are so long.” We would be sitting down for like 45 minutes, discussing this and that, looking up photos. I try and have a clear as possible consult so that it does give me that ability to just be more self-assured in the drawing and tattooing process.

You were mentioning that you were experiencing burnout recently. How did you get to that point and how have you been coping with it?

It has been such a fucking long time coming. Like when I reflect on it, it literally was coming from elementary school. I think one of the earliest symptoms of my racial trauma was probably not being diagnosed with ADD as a child. There’s already the biases when it comes to femmes and girls with ADD, but then you add Blackness on top of that and you’re just the disruptive kid that talks too much. And you’re high-functioning in other realms, but then none of your assignments can get in on time. If I had strategies for getting shit done [back then], I think I would have been better at this point.

I don’t even think I realized that I was an anxious person [before]. I was just like, “Why do all my clients have to wait two hours before their appointment because I’ve been spending five hours redrawing their drawing over and over again?” [That realization] came after a few radical shifts. I quit the white-owned shop that I was working at. Then COVID happened and I finally got to truly be my own boss. I finally got to dictate my own schedule and choose my projects.

I was in walk-in shops my whole career. I didn’t really have the space, with my undiagnosed ADD, to really sit down and focus on what I wanted to make in tattoos. Also the lane of tattooing that I’m in, it’s super high demanding of production. Producing work, doing walk-ins, having a lot of drawing homework after tattooing all day. It just became a balancing act. I inevitably crumbled. Everything plays into it, including being in a white-dominated industry, continuing those microaggressions, continuing the racial trauma.

All of these things coming together made me realize how weak of a foundation I had and it just erupted. Experiencing burnout forced me to be like, “Okay, one client a day.” It is egotistical to be like, “I am a fast tatter, fast tats, as many tats as possible, done clean, done solid, come to me, I can bang them out” versus really acknowledging the ritual of it and giving yourself space to be a human and eat breakfast, do some meditation before you go to work.

Now I’m just taking a step back with this beautiful time that we’ve been given under very unfortunate circumstances. I am able to work on the technique as well as work on what I want to do rather than just waiting for someone to be like, “I want a snake,” “I want a sacred heart.” Without those systemic confines, it gives you the opportunity to make your own boundaries with who you are as an artist and what you can really give and what you’re willing to accept.

What do those boundaries look like for you?

I think I’m still learning what that means. [I’m] learning about vicarious trauma through an artist named Tamara Santibanez. There’s a lot of vicarious trauma that happens in tattooing. It’s a really painful process. It’s a really emotional process. People get tattoos for all kinds of reasons, to express themselves, to feel autonomy, to pay homage. And some of those stories, while they are beautiful, I don’t know if a tattoo artist can carry them. I think before I just wanted to be an open container for anyone’s story. At the same time, while vulnerability is so appreciated, some things need to be directed through the right channels so that it can be properly held.

I think setting boundaries around certain sharing [is important] and establishing the tone beforehand. Going into a tattoo and being like, “I might not be speaking as much during the process but I’d love to talk more after.” Because even as tattooers we might not be well enough to be an open container for someone else’s pain that day.

Even small things like boundaries around access. There’s a lot of people trying to contact you often and I think having a preliminary write-up being like, “This is my process of booking. This is what you can expect to hear back from me.” Establishing all those boundaries helps manage your client’s expectations and creates just an easier flow all around.

How do you navigate promoting your work and your business?

It feels weird for sure. The branch of tattooing that I incubated in a bit, especially as a femme, if you show yourself, if you show your body or you show who you are, [it’s assumed] instead of just being good at tattooing you’re just getting clients because of how you appear. It’s quickly becoming a dead ideology.

Navigating self-promotion is definitely a challenge because it forces you to be a part of social media, which is slowly becoming more of a tool for corporations and governments. I have been learning the importance of showing myself. I’ve been learning the importance of how much the body of the person who is giving you a tattoo actually matters to all of your clients, especially if you’re not white, not skinny, not cis. Also, for promotion, I’ve just learning from other people as well. I have some of my homies who know how to structure schedules, schedule a flash day. I’ve been trying to take cues from that.

What’s great about tattoos is once you start tapping into the clientele that you naturally really align with, your tattoos start promoting themselves. Just being genuine, dedicating yourself to your art practice, eventually, your community will come. A few years ago, I drew a few Black women tattoos and I was scared, “No one is going to want this.” Now I have a community around me who supports me, I support them, and in that, there’s also mutual promotion. If I share a tattoo now, I have other Black tattooers celebrating me and being like, “That’s what’s up.”

Your style focuses on imagery of Black people, especially Black women. How did you come to your style?

I still am developing my style. Especially because I want to do all kinds of tats. I’ll do water color. I’ll do realistic in my best ability. That kind of stuff. It’s funny because I have people who will be like, “Your style is so unique” but I didn’t think I had a style. Apparently I do. It’s so funny how you perceive yourself versus how other people perceive you.

I think [it was] just influences as a child and searching for Black representation that already existed. A big key of life in general right now is to look to precedents that already existed and use the success of precedents. When I started looking for technically beautifully done depictions of Black people, I was finding depictions in some Renaissance art, which is funny. The absence of it in Renaissance art is what even made me look for it. Then I found it and it made me go off being like, “Wow. This style looks amazing.” The commentary of Euro-centric, Renaissance, colonial art being Black washed, I love.

The other thing was you would see them in hand painted movie posters from the ’70s, one of the only places you can see a beautiful painting of Black people. Also, anime. Anime depicts people so beautifully. I think what I’m trying to lead towards is efficiently evoking a detailed image and I’d say anime slays that. You want to see different ways of doing Black hair? The Boondocks got it.

That and then learning more from tattooers around me. My best friend, Erica Cyr, she’s been encouraging me from the get go when I was about to quit [a shop where] I had all these racist white people making Hitler jokes in front of me and my clients and shit. She was getting really into tattooing and I was always majorly vibing off of what she was doing and discovering tattooers that straight up are anime freaks themselves and they love to tattoo anime. I looked up to them a lot. Olivia Olivier, she tattoos in San Francisco and she was one of the first people that I saw trying to depict women of color in a traditional way. She was one of my biggest inspirations. I would say all of those influences brought me to this place, mixed with wanting to depict hieroglyphs modern day.

What does exploring an idea or an initial inspiration look like for you?

I feel like right now we’re developing a Black vocabulary in tattooing, a Black almost picture-based language for what we can use in tattooing to represent Black people.

A lot of my ideas derive from that energy of being like, “I see white people getting hammers. A Black person could get a hammer.” How do we take that and flip it on its back? I try to lean into the experience of being a Black person. I’m a mixed person, but my body is the body of a light-skinned Black person, so acknowledging that privilege and experience.

Things like… I want to make new patron saints. Maybe I’m speaking it too soon, but I’ve been thinking about patience and what patience is. What kind of patience does a Black child have when we, out of necessity, have to be patient while we’re sitting in our auntie’s lap getting our hair detangled and brushed for hours? Who is the symbol of patience beyond the Black child? Revisiting those things, and connecting these shared experiences really inspired me to create a new vocabulary and try and create new symbolism.

That’s something that’s even inherent in Blackness. I’m not a hotep because I’m here for the queers. In ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs were a combination of language, science, philosophy, spirituality, art, poetry, all of that. I guess I’m trying to bring that to tattooing and just making those connections through talking about shared experiences, consuming media, and really allowing myself the space to be like get a little freaky, get a little poetic on Black experiences.

What does editing look like for you?

One thing that I do is I look in the mirror. We’re going back into mirrors again. This is just a little hack trick thing, but if you ever aren’t sure about what is going on with your drawing, you can look in the mirror, or you can flip it backwards if it’s on tracing paper, and it gives you a lot of perspective as to what’s wrong with it.

[In] my editing process, my ADD comes up hardcore because I pretty much have 20 unfinished drawings that I forget about and they’ll never get finished. A lot of my process is not very streamlined right now too because I don’t use an iPad to draw. It involves a lot of tracing paper. You’ll do your initial drawing, go on top of tracing paper, do an addition with shading and stuff. That’s pretty much my editing process right now.

What have been the most important resources for you as you learn to navigate ADD and your work?

With ADD, and I think a lot of people get this way, once you start something you can get so enthralled in it that you can be working on it for hours without noticing your personal physical needs like, “I have to pee. I have to shower. I’m hungry.” That might not even show up for you.

Learning about Qigong, which is ancient Chinese medicine, has been huge in helping me. There’s even been concepts that I’ve been learning through exploring Chinese medicine where it’s like, “Okay, you’re going to work for an hour. That means you take a break. You rest for 20 minutes and then you revisit your work”, which has been so helpful.

Also somatics. Just knowing how your body feels. It sounds a little bit ridiculous because we should just know how our body feels, but in those moments where you are working… When I do a drawing, I can see when I’m frustrated versus when I’m chilling and flowing. You can see it in the lines and the pencil that I’m frustrated with myself and the drawing. Noticing, “Okay, I’m getting frustrated right now. Maybe I need to take a break, breathe some air, get a drink of water” is really helpful.

What’s something you wish someone had told you when you first started making art?

Everything is a practice. Play is even a practice. It’s hard because we all have to do what we need to survive. I think the most valuable suggestions that I’m even trying to apply to my art practice is start big, start with shapes. I’m coming from a place where I’m trying to become technically better at drawing, at rendering. That’s my skill.

Always go big before anything. I find a lot of times in art, we like to go for the juicy little details. In a face, you’ll start drawing the eyes first but really there’s so much to map out first. Keep revisiting those key basics. To the day that you pass on, if you’re a true master, you’re going to be going back being like, “How do I draw a sphere?”

Also, just that it’s not necessarily about the outcome. Social media has affected our values in a lot of ways. A lot of times, I’m trying to get out of the mentality that I’m making artwork to post online. A lot of times, too, when I was starting out, I would want to be very repetitious. I would work on one piece for a few hours when really if I had just been like, “That’s not working” and throw it away and start the same piece over again, it gains so much more growth.

I would tell my [past] self, too, to not get so stressed out, to enjoy the process, have fun rather than just be like, “I fucking suck.” That’s a part of the burnout. I’d been shaming myself into getting better and it’s like when does that ever work on anyone?

What does your internal monologue sound like now instead of beating yourself up?

Well, now I’m a little freak when it comes to meditation. I’m trying to go hang out in other realms. I’ve been trying to visualize that I’m actually hanging out with myself sometimes, visualize that I’m a separate person and we’re having a dialogue. Now I try and start my day by looking in the mirror and asking, “How are you today?” I have a little convo, checking in with how [I’m] actually feeling: “How are you feeling? Does this feel good right now? Do you need to take a break?” I’m just trying to have a kinder internal dialogue where it’s like, “This is not the end of the world, boo boo. This is just your gift that you’re playing in and honing.”

Right now I am really trying to draw less for tattoos. Tattooing requires a certain amount of refinement. To get myself in the drawing zone, I’ve been trying to do a daily practice of just drawing while I journal without expectation of the outcome. I find that really freeing and it also adds to my flow when I’m drawing for a tattoo. Just allowing yourself that space to play almost allows yourself the space to be serious and concentrated, letting both sides of yourself live that way.

Honestly, at this point in time, it takes me a very long time to prepare for a tattoo. I think that’s because I lack a bit of consistency when it comes to my own personal care. [I] eat a good breakfast. I show my designs the day of, but I make sure to have a very, very thorough consult.

Sometimes people make fun of me, being like, “Your consults are so long.” We would be sitting down for like 45 minutes, discussing this and that, looking up photos. I try and have a clear as possible consult so that it does give me that ability to just be more self-assured in the drawing and tattooing process.

You were mentioning that you were experiencing burnout recently. How did you get to that point and how have you been coping with it?

It has been such a fucking long time coming. Like when I reflect on it, it literally was coming from elementary school. I think one of the earliest symptoms of my racial trauma was probably not being diagnosed with ADD as a child. There’s already the biases when it comes to femmes and girls with ADD, but then you add Blackness on top of that and you’re just the disruptive kid that talks too much. And you’re high-functioning in other realms, but then none of your assignments can get in on time. If I had strategies for getting shit done [back then], I think I would have been better at this point.

I don’t even think I realized that I was an anxious person [before]. I was just like, “Why do all my clients have to wait two hours before their appointment because I’ve been spending five hours redrawing their drawing over and over again?” [That realization] came after a few radical shifts. I quit the white-owned shop that I was working at. Then COVID happened and I finally got to truly be my own boss. I finally got to dictate my own schedule and choose my projects.

I was in walk-in shops my whole career. I didn’t really have the space, with my undiagnosed ADD, to really sit down and focus on what I wanted to make in tattoos. Also the lane of tattooing that I’m in, it’s super high demanding of production. Producing work, doing walk-ins, having a lot of drawing homework after tattooing all day. It just became a balancing act. I inevitably crumbled. Everything plays into it, including being in a white-dominated industry, continuing those microaggressions, continuing the racial trauma.

All of these things coming together made me realize how weak of a foundation I had and it just erupted. Experiencing burnout forced me to be like, “Okay, one client a day.” It is egotistical to be like, “I am a fast tatter, fast tats, as many tats as possible, done clean, done solid, come to me, I can bang them out” versus really acknowledging the ritual of it and giving yourself space to be a human and eat breakfast, do some meditation before you go to work.

Now I’m just taking a step back with this beautiful time that we’ve been given under very unfortunate circumstances. I am able to work on the technique as well as work on what I want to do rather than just waiting for someone to be like, “I want a snake,” “I want a sacred heart.” Without those systemic confines, it gives you the opportunity to make your own boundaries with who you are as an artist and what you can really give and what you’re willing to accept.

What do those boundaries look like for you?

I think I’m still learning what that means. [I’m] learning about vicarious trauma through an artist named Tamara Santibanez. There’s a lot of vicarious trauma that happens in tattooing. It’s a really painful process. It’s a really emotional process. People get tattoos for all kinds of reasons, to express themselves, to feel autonomy, to pay homage. And some of those stories, while they are beautiful, I don’t know if a tattoo artist can carry them. I think before I just wanted to be an open container for anyone’s story. At the same time, while vulnerability is so appreciated, some things need to be directed through the right channels so that it can be properly held.

I think setting boundaries around certain sharing [is important] and establishing the tone beforehand. Going into a tattoo and being like, “I might not be speaking as much during the process but I’d love to talk more after.” Because even as tattooers we might not be well enough to be an open container for someone else’s pain that day.

Even small things like boundaries around access. There’s a lot of people trying to contact you often and I think having a preliminary write-up being like, “This is my process of booking. This is what you can expect to hear back from me.” Establishing all those boundaries helps manage your client’s expectations and creates just an easier flow all around.

How do you navigate promoting your work and your business?

It feels weird for sure. The branch of tattooing that I incubated in a bit, especially as a femme, if you show yourself, if you show your body or you show who you are, [it’s assumed] instead of just being good at tattooing you’re just getting clients because of how you appear. It’s quickly becoming a dead ideology.

Navigating self-promotion is definitely a challenge because it forces you to be a part of social media, which is slowly becoming more of a tool for corporations and governments. I have been learning the importance of showing myself. I’ve been learning the importance of how much the body of the person who is giving you a tattoo actually matters to all of your clients, especially if you’re not white, not skinny, not cis. Also, for promotion, I’ve just learning from other people as well. I have some of my homies who know how to structure schedules, schedule a flash day. I’ve been trying to take cues from that.

What’s great about tattoos is once you start tapping into the clientele that you naturally really align with, your tattoos start promoting themselves. Just being genuine, dedicating yourself to your art practice, eventually, your community will come. A few years ago, I drew a few Black women tattoos and I was scared, “No one is going to want this.” Now I have a community around me who supports me, I support them, and in that, there’s also mutual promotion. If I share a tattoo now, I have other Black tattooers celebrating me and being like, “That’s what’s up.”

Your style focuses on imagery of Black people, especially Black women. How did you come to your style?

I still am developing my style. Especially because I want to do all kinds of tats. I’ll do water color. I’ll do realistic in my best ability. That kind of stuff. It’s funny because I have people who will be like, “Your style is so unique” but I didn’t think I had a style. Apparently I do. It’s so funny how you perceive yourself versus how other people perceive you.

I think [it was] just influences as a child and searching for Black representation that already existed. A big key of life in general right now is to look to precedents that already existed and use the success of precedents. When I started looking for technically beautifully done depictions of Black people, I was finding depictions in some Renaissance art, which is funny. The absence of it in Renaissance art is what even made me look for it. Then I found it and it made me go off being like, “Wow. This style looks amazing.” The commentary of Euro-centric, Renaissance, colonial art being Black washed, I love.

The other thing was you would see them in hand painted movie posters from the ’70s, one of the only places you can see a beautiful painting of Black people. Also, anime. Anime depicts people so beautifully. I think what I’m trying to lead towards is efficiently evoking a detailed image and I’d say anime slays that. You want to see different ways of doing Black hair? The Boondocks got it.

That and then learning more from tattooers around me. My best friend, Erica Cyr, she’s been encouraging me from the get go when I was about to quit [a shop where] I had all these racist white people making Hitler jokes in front of me and my clients and shit. She was getting really into tattooing and I was always majorly vibing off of what she was doing and discovering tattooers that straight up are anime freaks themselves and they love to tattoo anime. I looked up to them a lot. Olivia Olivier, she tattoos in San Francisco and she was one of the first people that I saw trying to depict women of color in a traditional way. She was one of my biggest inspirations. I would say all of those influences brought me to this place, mixed with wanting to depict hieroglyphs modern day.

What does exploring an idea or an initial inspiration look like for you?

I feel like right now we’re developing a Black vocabulary in tattooing, a Black almost picture-based language for what we can use in tattooing to represent Black people.

A lot of my ideas derive from that energy of being like, “I see white people getting hammers. A Black person could get a hammer.” How do we take that and flip it on its back? I try to lean into the experience of being a Black person. I’m a mixed person, but my body is the body of a light-skinned Black person, so acknowledging that privilege and experience.

Things like… I want to make new patron saints. Maybe I’m speaking it too soon, but I’ve been thinking about patience and what patience is. What kind of patience does a Black child have when we, out of necessity, have to be patient while we’re sitting in our auntie’s lap getting our hair detangled and brushed for hours? Who is the symbol of patience beyond the Black child? Revisiting those things, and connecting these shared experiences really inspired me to create a new vocabulary and try and create new symbolism.

That’s something that’s even inherent in Blackness. I’m not a hotep because I’m here for the queers. In ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs were a combination of language, science, philosophy, spirituality, art, poetry, all of that. I guess I’m trying to bring that to tattooing and just making those connections through talking about shared experiences, consuming media, and really allowing myself the space to be like get a little freaky, get a little poetic on Black experiences.

What does editing look like for you?

One thing that I do is I look in the mirror. We’re going back into mirrors again. This is just a little hack trick thing, but if you ever aren’t sure about what is going on with your drawing, you can look in the mirror, or you can flip it backwards if it’s on tracing paper, and it gives you a lot of perspective as to what’s wrong with it.

[In] my editing process, my ADD comes up hardcore because I pretty much have 20 unfinished drawings that I forget about and they’ll never get finished. A lot of my process is not very streamlined right now too because I don’t use an iPad to draw. It involves a lot of tracing paper. You’ll do your initial drawing, go on top of tracing paper, do an addition with shading and stuff. That’s pretty much my editing process right now.

What have been the most important resources for you as you learn to navigate ADD and your work?

With ADD, and I think a lot of people get this way, once you start something you can get so enthralled in it that you can be working on it for hours without noticing your personal physical needs like, “I have to pee. I have to shower. I’m hungry.” That might not even show up for you.

Learning about Qigong, which is ancient Chinese medicine, has been huge in helping me. There’s even been concepts that I’ve been learning through exploring Chinese medicine where it’s like, “Okay, you’re going to work for an hour. That means you take a break. You rest for 20 minutes and then you revisit your work”, which has been so helpful.

Also somatics. Just knowing how your body feels. It sounds a little bit ridiculous because we should just know how our body feels, but in those moments where you are working… When I do a drawing, I can see when I’m frustrated versus when I’m chilling and flowing. You can see it in the lines and the pencil that I’m frustrated with myself and the drawing. Noticing, “Okay, I’m getting frustrated right now. Maybe I need to take a break, breathe some air, get a drink of water” is really helpful.

What’s something you wish someone had told you when you first started making art?

Everything is a practice. Play is even a practice. It’s hard because we all have to do what we need to survive. I think the most valuable suggestions that I’m even trying to apply to my art practice is start big, start with shapes. I’m coming from a place where I’m trying to become technically better at drawing, at rendering. That’s my skill.

Always go big before anything. I find a lot of times in art, we like to go for the juicy little details. In a face, you’ll start drawing the eyes first but really there’s so much to map out first. Keep revisiting those key basics. To the day that you pass on, if you’re a true master, you’re going to be going back being like, “How do I draw a sphere?”

Also, just that it’s not necessarily about the outcome. Social media has affected our values in a lot of ways. A lot of times, I’m trying to get out of the mentality that I’m making artwork to post online. A lot of times, too, when I was starting out, I would want to be very repetitious. I would work on one piece for a few hours when really if I had just been like, “That’s not working” and throw it away and start the same piece over again, it gains so much more growth.

I would tell my [past] self, too, to not get so stressed out, to enjoy the process, have fun rather than just be like, “I fucking suck.” That’s a part of the burnout. I’d been shaming myself into getting better and it’s like when does that ever work on anyone?

What does your internal monologue sound like now instead of beating yourself up?

Well, now I’m a little freak when it comes to meditation. I’m trying to go hang out in other realms. I’ve been trying to visualize that I’m actually hanging out with myself sometimes, visualize that I’m a separate person and we’re having a dialogue. Now I try and start my day by looking in the mirror and asking, “How are you today?” I have a little convo, checking in with how [I’m] actually feeling: “How are you feeling? Does this feel good right now? Do you need to take a break?” I’m just trying to have a kinder internal dialogue where it’s like, “This is not the end of the world, boo boo. This is just your gift that you’re playing in and honing.”