✳MY PRACTICE, INTENTIONS, AND INFORMATION✳
Tattooing allows for me to feel and embrace the vast possibilities that exist through our bodies! I believe in the healing and transformative powers of inscribing intention, beauty, and meaning in the flesh through ink. I see tattooing as spell-casting, medicine, care work, somatic+embodiment work, sacred self nourishment, memory keeping, amplifying self awareness, brewing ancestral connection, as translations of experiences, history, healing, our lessons, the journeys.
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My tattoo practice feels like a deep extension of my other crafts. It found me in my dream worlds in 2016 while in school. I dreamt that I had tattooed my arm and that feeling+vision lingered with me for months. The day I graduated, I learned how to handpoke through another handpoker named, Sookie. This moment marked the transition from the academic mind logic obssessed school frameworks to a creative, intuitive, fluid, embodied flow and learning process. This practice feels so aligned for me, tattooing is an extension of all my other creative practices, another branch of the tree. When I close my eyes, I see fractals and patterns constantly.
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Intentions:
I seek to amplify the autonomy of and connection to our bodies, hearts, and spirits, and inviting transformation and deeper self-awareness through this practice. Each session acts as a sensorial ceremony to mark the flesh with symbols soaked in intentions. I honor how tattooing is a powerful tool to reclaim the body on our own terms and challenge rigid, fear based projections, expectations, and socializations of our bodies—especially for queer and trans BIPOC. The values and politics of my practice are rooted in anti-racism, dismantling anti-Blackness, annihilating caste, queer and trans liberation, freedom from colonial oppressive systems, fighting Islamophobia, supporting global indigenous sovereignty, nature/earth reverence, spirit connection, emotional + energetic cultivation+intelligence, and healing. Tattooing is healing and a liberatory act for communities whose bodies have been systemically and societally marginalized, dehumanized, police, and deemed unworthy. I would like to acknowledge the importance of anti-caste work in tattooing and how tattoo practices in particular to South Asia belong to caste oppressed communities and was/is used as resistance by caste oppressed people against Brahminical supremacy and patriarchy. These histories are often erased because of the Savarna-washing of history.
Tattoo artists must consider power dynamics of who is coming into their space and in relation to themselves, what histories they are bringing, and how to honor their clients as well as themselves. This also means making visual vocabularies that are outside Brahmanical and white narratives and imaginations. Tattooing, in my approach, is a form of care work of holding space, deep listening to the body, energy, and the client, and supporting the client in activating their agency through this process.
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Below are selected tattoos I have done in 2019 and 2020. Handpoke & Machine.
Two eyes of protection, expression+ conviction from my Breath of Expansion spring 2020 flash for mirza! To trusting our inner sight-voice/ intuition, honoring the wisdoms that inherently reside within, to the medicine of crying, unraveling in release and emotional cleansing !
Custom dome magic for Alizeh! This piece infused Sindhi tiles, Ajrak designs, and mosque architecture, woven together using the reference images she sent me. This was such an activating and beautiful process to study the the vast visual vocabularies of Ajrak and Sindhi tiles and such a lovely collaboration. This piece honors her Sindhi ancestral lineage, Sindhi tattoo culture, and her familial connection to Sindh, Pakistan. Machine, done 1/11/20
From my Spilling, Dripping, Flowering flash 2019. The first is inspired by South Asian jewelry in its form, expresses juicy oasis energy+ energized flowering into our most honest and free selves! Very much the energy of spring, tending to what is blossoming and moving with gratitude. This piece feels like a gateway, that wherever planted on the skin activates a story/ that area/ whatever you are affirming and inviting in. Diamonds are really potent symbols for me, in representing the balance+ understanding of our expansive masculine and feminine energies, the four directions, and four elements. ✻
Nourishing life back into parts of the self that have been denied+ suppressed+ wounded ➰mehndi lines spells••• Harnessing the lesson of feeling grounded in the present self definitions we create, know, cultivate, & love!! To honoring wildness+freedom+ inner power
A collaborative piece honoring his ancestry, details that resemble Palestinian+Syrian bridal henna, freedom حرية, femininity, reclaiming ritual, rewriting roles, henna, beauty ~ design elements by me, divine arrangement by Johnee! Done with reddish brown henna colored ink. 11/11/19
Juicy growing flora portal connecting Anmol’s heart and solar plexus. From my Fruitful conviction flash sheet •Take up space Aug 2019 flash! Ink affirmation to rise into her bountiful bold expansiveness• 3/12/20
Femme flower splendor 11/23/20
Pomegranate exuberance dripping w phulkari (Punjabi flower work embroidery) for Sarah from my Eternal Splendor Fall Flash! Honoring her ancestries, the stories and presence of pomegranates in Islam and Judaism, flower divinity & beauty, and life energy. Lines infused w mehndi flavors & flow, south Asian jewelry shapes and patterns. 12/27/19
Peacock-esqe reflection birds for sound artist mayx ~ also from my Gulistaan-e-aarzuu flash! Mirroring seahorse like curvature~ gender bending creatures ~ to expansiveness, the endlessness and infiniteness of the self, our imaginations, & to self creation••• 12/3/19 Machine
Lush garden for Shana from my Ethereal Knowledge Summer 2019 Flash •❁• ❁•❁• Affirming self trust+ deep cavernous inner knowing/ intuition!
Tattoos for my mother~ done 2017 and 2018, both handpokes
Handpoke for Rocio in 2018. A combination of three pieces from my flash, honoring her spiritual work, her lineage of healers!
Abundance matka/ vessel handpoke from my harmony flash for Mirza. Calling in feeling abundant in the wisdoms and well of ourselves, bodies, spirits. 5/21/19.
Planting new life+beauty at a site of pain🧡 handpoked custom piece for Pablo with deconstructed marigolds, energies of expansion and reflection, holding dualities, vibrancy, marigold light. I love the way tattoos can be used to transform+ rewrite past energy imprints ~ stories/ memories held by certain parts of our bodies! Embroidering on the flesh is a beautiful bridge to wisdoms+ wells of our spirit ••• Started in summer 2019 finished 10/1/19!
Handpoke for Anjali ✼ ✼ ✼ ~ reflecting memories of folk art in her family home & reminders of finding home within the self+ body! From my Shimmer Glimmer Simmer flash celebrating self cultivation + excavation & the magic that pours from harnessing & believing in our shine /gifts~ 10/9/19
Handpoked heart of radiance revival release for beautiful soul Maryama ♡❥ ❥ ❥ from my balance & wholeness flash••• A lustrous song & a prayer for heart healing• Re-expanding the selves that hv contracted ✺ To see yourself with the most luv & bathe in your innate splendor ⚪️
Hand poked flash piece from my fertilizing vibrancy 2019 flash for lovely Kumi! Devotion to our heartspace~ listening and honoring it as guidance to our authenticity, intuition & needs! A surrenderous and strategic heart w sharp directionality to it, like an arrow— trusting our inner knowings & path our souls call us to take, & working w focus~ done 10/30/19
Lion energies of power, nectar, fruitfulness, expansion for Zinkoo! Dec 2019