In Conversation with Tamara Santibañez – Tattoos and the Vastness of Human Experience

Co:Create had a meaningful conversation with Tamara Santibañez on the multi-dimensional nature of tattoos. In this exclusive interview, Tamara discusses the vastness of the human experience and how tattoos can serve as tools of transformation, empowerment, and healing. They explore the intersections of tattooing, gender identity, and body image amidst a landscape driven by cultural messaging and biased media depictions. Through their work, they show how tattooing can be an immediate, personal intervention, offering individuals a new way to reclaim their bodies, fostering ownership, and cultivating a renewed sense of self-love.

Tamara Santibañez is a 37-year-old interdisciplinary artist based in New York, where they have lived for nearly 20 years. Born in Oregon and raised in Georgia, Tamara’s Mexican-American heritage and cultural ties deeply inform their artistic practice. With over 16 years of experience, they specialize in fine-line black and gray tattooing, rooted in Chicano style—a tradition that speaks to their connection with West Coast cultural expressions.

Beyond tattooing, Tamara is also a writer, oral historian, and visual artist. They have become a leading advocate for trauma-informed tattooing, focusing on client care and creating safe, reparative experiences for survivors of trauma. Their work began during a 2019 collaboration with the Women's Prison Association (WPA), where Santibañez helped organize a network of artists to provide cover-up tattoos for survivors of trafficking, many of whom had been tattooed against their will. To support this initiative, Santibañez co-created a pamphlet titled Informed Consent and Trauma Aware Tattooing (Practical Guidelines for Artists), offering essential guidelines to ensure tattoo artists avoid retraumatizing survivors during the tattoo process.

Tamara’s work is deeply collaborative, often centered on their clients’ personal narratives and experiences. They find inspiration in the stories people bring to the tattooing process, from survivors reclaiming their bodies to individuals seeking new relationships with parts of themselves.

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Interview below

I'm Tamara Santibañez, and I'm 37. I was born in Oregon but grew up in Georgia. I'm Mexican-American—my mom is from Mexico, and my dad is American. Though I grew up in the South, I have deep cultural roots elsewhere, and I landed in New York when I was 18. Next year, I will have been in New York for 20 years. I feel very attached to New York, dedicated to it as a place, as a community, and as a network. I have a lot of hometown pride for NYC, even though I wasn’t born here—I've lived here longer than anywhere else in my life.

I say I'm an interdisciplinary artist because it's the easiest shorthand. I’m a writer, an oral historian, and I have a visual studio practice. I create multimedia sculptural work using leather tooling, ceramics, and painting. I’m also a tattoo artist and have been tattooing for about 16 years."

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What style do you primarily tattoo in? Is there something that drew you to that style? 

I work primarily in fine-line black and gray, which is also sometimes considered to be Chicano-style tattooing. And that's how I tend to identify it as a point of origin.

I started tattooing in New York in the late 2000s, at a time and place where American Traditional was considered the standard style—especially given the rich history of New York tattooing, like the Bowery and all that. While I was dedicated to learning this style and technique, seeing images of the West Coast-based Chicano style of tattooing really resonated with me culturally. It felt like a tradition I wanted to carry forward and expand upon in the Northeast, where it wasn’t as fiercely represented. When I first connected with the style, its history deeply resonated with me, particularly its roots in the California prison system. Many of the images stem not only from Mexican American history and Mexican history, especially indigenous traditions, but also from the Chicano movement and other civil rights movements that were concurrent with it.

I felt really proud to be part of its rich history and lineage and to have a vehicle to continue talking about things today. I am proud to be able to say, “This is what you're seeing, and this is where it comes from. This is how it got here, and this is what it means to me. And this is what I want people to know about it.”

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What early influences drove you to a life in art? Further, how did you evolve from your work in art to ultimately tattooing?

I was always interested in art as a kid. I was constantly drawing, and I was really encouraged in that at a young age. Fortunately, I had creative outlets. I was really interested in craft. I remember my mom teaching me how to crochet and doing a lot of little handmade things like beading or calligraphy. I was really excited by any sort of tactile process, and as I got older, I got really into sewing.

After graduating from high school, I decided to go to fashion design school in the city. But I quickly realized I was more interested in processes and handmade work rather than design and production—especially in design schools where you're pushed toward mass production and the seasonal schedules of the fashion industry. So, I ended up leaving that program and going to school for printmaking, which is very punk rock. It has a lot of relationships to tattooing and tattoo art, both culturally and technically. The processes, the hand gestures, and the way things are made felt very akin to tattooing. I was doing a lot of stone lithography, wood carving, linoleum cutting, and handset and letterpress typesetting. While I was in school for printmaking, I started taking my interest in tattooing more seriously, especially since I was getting tattooed more at that time. I was exposed to this world of artists, and I started following the tattoo styles they were doing. I was following people I admired and looked up to, including [Stephen Verge].

I saw their work and was inspired to start tattooing on my own. With the encouragement of some people I knew in the field, I started out of my house. I got lucky and landed a job at Three Kings Tattoo while I was finishing school.

During my last year of school, I was in the print studio, then going to the tattoo studio, and ultimately started tattooing at Three Kings full-time once I graduated. 

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Where do you draw your inspiration now? 

I would say primarily from the people that I’m working with. I always try to draw from the things I know firsthand and most intimately. So, naturally, I ended up developing what many would consider my “signature style,” which is rooted in fine-line Chicano black and gray tattooing but also incorporates punk rock and heavy metal influences. I just went with what I knew, and this style became a blend of those things—I’ve established a visual language that works for me. But I’ve been fortunate and pleasantly surprised by how people respond to the things I create in the studio. They’re often interested in interpreting my work as tattoos; it's not just a one-way translation. For example, I’ll make a ceramic sculpture, and someone will say, “I love this sculpture—what if we did a tattoo version of it?” It’s nice to see how creations from one medium can cross over and take on a new form.

Recently, I joke that I’m sold out of ideas. So much of my experience has been as a custom tattoo artist, working with clients’ ideas, helping them flesh things out, and offering suggestions—this is a process I love. A lot of the tattoo industry has become very flash-driven, where people ask to see your book of designs, assuming you just have a collection ready to go. I have some flash, of course, to meet that demand, but I always ask, “What do you want? What are your ideas? What are you interested in?” because that’s the part of the process I really enjoy.

Now, I find myself in a place where I’m not sitting down and generating tons of new tattoo ideas on my own. Instead, I’m really excited to work with people and their ideas—often things I wouldn’t have thought of or haven’t seen before. Helping bring those ideas to life is something I find really cool.

Has there been something that you have seen in clients consistently?

Tattooing is about finding a common ground, right? Or finding a place where you can support that person's goals. And I would say that when I first started working in a walk-in shop, I had a really difficult time talking with strangers. I was kind of an introverted person. I didn't really have a lot of practice with chit chatting or making small talk or helping people be at ease in this unfamiliar situation. It took practice. It really took dedicated practice to offer a welcoming environment  and to give people the information that they needed. It took practice to make people feel free to ask questions – sometimes with people who I really had nothing in common with. And I still consider that to be some of the most valuable life experience that I've had, let alone work experience. 

That's something that is really special about tattooing; you can offer this service or be a facilitator of an experience for people of an entirely different walk of life – whether it's somebody who works in finance or somebody who's visiting from across the world that you find yourself in this shared space for a limited period of time. You can connect around this very intimate moment which can sometimes be painful, and something that results in something permanent. You might not see each other again, but they're carrying this remnant of that time together. 

I don't do walk-ins anymore, so a lot of my clients are people that I've tattooed for over 10 years. I actually just tattooed a woman who I think her last tattoo was one that I did close to 10 years ago. She came back in a really different point in her life. That's something that I think is really special – the temporal element of tattooing, the seasons of your life, and how you mark those times with a tattoo. I don't want to say that the clients I work with nowadays are “self-selecting” necessarily, because that sounds really narrow, but I found that the more I share authentically about myself– what my values are, what I'm interested in, what I'm curious about–that brings in people who share that and who can connect over those things, which is really beautiful. I think it's really humanizing. You're not just being seen as a technician or as a provider. 

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There are countless reasons people get tattoos, whether it's a spontaneous moment, a way to take control, or even an unwanted life experience. With the clients you work with now, what would you say is the common motivation or desire they share when coming to you for a tattoo? 

I don't know that there is one. I would say there certainly never was a single common denominator. What I have realized is – as a person, whether that's as a tattooer or as an artist – tattooing is so much about personal narrative, about storytelling, whether or not you choose to share that with your artist. The narrative could be internal, it could be something you talk about with your friends or your loved one. You don't have to share it with me necessarily, but it is part of this longer narrative trajectory of your life. I love bearing witness to that kind of thing and that is what oral history work is about. It's about this very slow, very present listening. 

I've had a lot of opportunities to practice the act of listening as a tattoo artist, sometimes over many sessions with the same person or over a short period of time on something that's more impulsive. I've appreciated learning that the human experience is so vast. I've heard so many things that I continue to be surprised by over the years after so long having done this. But I think the broader thematic underpinning that I wanted to write about when I wrote my book, is the encounters of bodies within existing power structures. So much of what people talk about is “something happened to me or I'm working with something outside of my scope of consent or power, but I am working to reclaim power within that or I'm working to confront that or overcome that.” Whether they're a survivor of many different things, whether that's survivor of incarceration or survivor of sexual assault, of childhood trauma or breast cancer. You know, I think survivorship is a recurring theme but it's not the only theme. Sometimes people really want to find a new relationship with a part of their body; perhaps something that the outside world has devalued through cultural messaging, popular culture, or media depictions.

That's something that I write about quite a bit and I'm interested in the potency of.

How do you see the role of tattoos evolving in terms of helping people navigate complex issues created by such cultural messaging?

I mean, there's so many ways. I work with so many other trans people who have a difficult relationship with something. To give a specific example, trans masculine people might not be able to tattoo their chest before they can access top surgery because they don't have insurance or because it's a really long waiting process for the surgeon that they want. And so tattooing can be this really immediate intervention or something much different. I did a study with a friend of mine, Scout Silverstein about tattoo tattooing for gender dysphoria and self body image in eating disorder recovery. And it was really beautiful to hear the things that people articulated around; things like “I didn't like this part of my body. I've really struggled to find a way to love it. And now I have artwork and I can really love the artwork. And that helps me by extension – I can love my body in a way that I haven't been able to before.” 

Or even the physical care that is required to get tattooed – making sure that you ate, making sure that you slept, making sure that you put ointment on it afterwards, having an attentiveness in that care practice. I would even say, in an ancestral connection lineage or practice people say “I want this tattoo of my ancestor tattooed on my body. I want to carry them with me into this current plane of existence and into the future while I'm here." There so many beautiful ways to do that and people continue to find and generate new ways. And to be a facilitator and a collaborator in that is very exciting.

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How do you approach that as an artist? If someone's coming to you, whether they tell you their story or not, it must be challenging to take someone's entire history or entire story and turn that into something meaningful for them. 

I'm not somebody who pressures people to be overly revealing. I think that feels just as bad as somebody not listening to you at all. What I try to do is make myself available, and just say, what do you want me to know about this? Is there something that you need me to see? Is there something you need me to read? Is there something that you want to share? And that can produce a lot of different results. 

One thing I love about oral history interviews is consciously creating a space where people can invite others in. I often describe it as "calling someone else into the room." I like to ask, "Is there a person you want to have on the record alongside you in this archive?"

Sometimes, especially for those who’ve been through significant life experiences like incarceration, people lose touch with others who were once important to them. They might say, "There was this person from when I was 16. I don’t know what happened to them, but they had a big impact on my life. I just want to make sure their name is said in my story."

There's something special about being able to do something similar in tattooing. It’s like asking, "Who’s in the room with us? Who do you want to recall, reference, or shout out relationally?" Because in that moment, I’m here with you, and we’re creating this together. 

That is something that I have been considering differently as an artist. What does it mean to be collaborating with another individual on their goals? Because I often argue that tattooing can be this political intervention on the body. So if somebody has a political aim, how am I in solidarity with that? In practice and in a really material way. So it's like, okay, you haven't been listened to about your body in the world at large. How can I really listen to your body in this space? And how can you carry an artifact of that encounter out into the world? Or maybe you're still not being listened to as much, but you can remember a time that you were. And what does that produce?

Do you notice a psychological change or shift in self-confidence in people before and after they receive a tattoo?

I wouldn't necessarily make such a lofty claim, but I do think that a shift can happen. The thing about tattoos is that they're not static; they move with us and change as we change. Sometimes they feel like they represent an older part of us. There are also many instances where tattooing is used as a form of violence, such as inflicting trauma on people—the tattooing itself is weaponized against the person. So, I never want to reduce the tattoo to a simplistic, net positive, because that neglects a lot of its contextual meaning. 

What I find really interesting about tattooing is that it bridges the public-private divide. It's something that's on the body, which is quite private, but is often visible to others. It can invite an entry point for connection, engagement, and visibility. I think getting a tattoo is a big decision. Even after 16 years and thousands of tattoos, I never cease to hold that view. For each person, no matter how many tattoos you have, getting a new one is a big decision—one you make consciously. I think there is a shift no matter what, even if it's something silly or purely aesthetically beautiful. I have tattoos that I look at and think, "I just love to look at this." Maybe I chose it on the fly, and it didn't have deep meaning, but I love to see it, to see it on my body, in movement, reflected back to me in the mirror. That’s a shift in and of itself. 

But there are certainly tattoos that carry more potency, both because of the intention behind them and the after-effects. Mastectomy scar covers, for example, can have very material results, like improving safety or employment prospects. I've covered tattoos that were barriers to employment, especially for people who have been incarcerated. I've covered tattoos that were a real safety risk, like top surgery scar cover-ups, for people who don't want to be legible as transgender, especially when they’re at the beach, with their family, or with friends, or in spaces where they don't know others. These tattoos can create a significant shift in how safely someone can be themselves in public. There's a wide spectrum of what that shift looks like and what it does, but I do think it exists to some extent with every tattoo.

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Is there anything else that you want to add to kind of just the overarching topic here? 

Power is a central point of interrogation in tattooing, especially when discussing trauma. Sometimes the approach—whether through provider frameworks like medical care, psychiatric care, or even massage therapy—can become reductive and deficit-based, focusing too deeply on the terrible things that have happened or the ways people may need to heal or are traumatized. However, these experiences also produce individuals who possess self-knowledge, generosity, personal power, and tangible skills. Tattooing can tap into and honor these qualities, which is something I try to acknowledge in my interactions. 

It's important to note that a tattoo artist is not a healer. I'm not healing or fixing anyone; the people I work with are doing that for themselves. My role is to support that process, sometimes reflecting it back to them, saying, "I think this is amazing. How cool. Let me help you with that. I'm so happy I can be here." I'm particularly wary of ensuring that people don't give away their personal power throughout this process. 

Tattooing is meant to be a collaborative experience, and that's one of its most beautiful aspects.

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