Sweetheart Cha-Cha
2020 - MoMA PS1
At part of KinkOut’s residency at MoMA PS1, attendees of the collective’s Spaces activation were invited to create an ink impression of themselves, alone or with a partner(s), performing an action they wished to memorialize and enter into the archive of kink community history. Subverting the tradition of ballroom dancing footprint instructions, the prints both create a fossil and record of community members’ presence on the day of the event and provide a set of steps for future participants to “follow.” The impressions created challenge the viewer’s reading of recorded body parts, proposed actions, and gendered footwear.
Alternative Modes of Penetration
2019 - MoMA PS1
Alternative Modes of Penetration is a series of performances organized by Doreen Garner that engage with the practice of tattooing. Shifting focus away from the permanent images produced by tattoo artists, these performances highlight elements of the tattoo process that often go unnoticed, such as the submissive and dominant roles between tattoo artist and subject, the relationship between sound and skin tension, the physical limits of human flesh, and experiences of voyeurism, violence, and vulnerability. A licensed tattoo practitioner, Garner performs with tattoo artists Anderson Luna and Tamara Santibañez, along with collaborator Tommy Martinez.
In one performance, Doreen Garner creates symbols that reference colonization and the triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Casting white men as sculptural material, and using water instead of ink, Garner tattoos the skin with inflammation alone, creating distinguishing marks that shame without reward and fade over time. In another performance, Anderson Luna and Tommy Martinez explore the range of sound produced while tattooing the head of performer Anwar Isaacs, using the tension of the skin and the tattoo equipment as raw material for improvised, spatialized live audio processing. Tamara Santibañezl tattoos Domina Jia as Yin Quan binds them with Shibari-style bondage, intensifying the dominant and submissive roles of tattoo artists and their subjects.
Shapeshifting: Towards Being Seen
2019 - Tulsa Artist Fellowship with Atomic Culture and Ritual Electric
While in Tulsa, I began the first iteration of an ongoing oral history initiative that accompanies covering and re-working tattoos on individuals exiting the prison system. Shapeshifting: towards being seen" opened on September 6th, 2019. The exhibition included documentation of the tattoos both before and after, as well as a recorded oral history component investigating how experiences with incarceration shift perspectives on tattoos.
Tattooing becoming mainstream in recent years has relied heavily on distancing itself from stereotypical associations with criminality. This effectively doubly marginalizes those who have a history of incarceration or have been impacted by the criminal justice system. Tattoos that are deemed gang-related or that are perceived by others as poor quality (assignations created alongside race and class) can be a barrier to employment and other systematic and social engagement. By researching this site of overlap, I hope to push back against the respectability politics present in the tattoo industry and to address the stigma toward tattoos and bodies characterized as “criminal.”
Through partnering with Ritual Electric Tattoo and Resonance Tulsa, I worked with women to record narratives and visuals that offer a more complete and nuanced picture of tattooing’s potential for personal empowerment, centering their voices and experiences as tattooed people. Themes that arose included tattooing as a vehicle to assert an authority over one’s body that cannot be taken away by the state, having a memento that maintains a connective thread to a life outside prison walls, and being able to maintain a sense of individuality in an environment that aims to strip that away.
Belt / Border
2019
Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Tamara Santibañez’s Belt / Border is composed of ninety-eight meticulously hand-painted pyramid studs, rendered as pieces of iconic Mexican Talavera pottery piercing the gallery walls. Belt / Border invites viewers to reflect on the drawn-out interplay between violence, history, complicity, and commerce embedded in our national and institutional borders—from the plexiglass barriers of the museum to the thick geopolitical lines on a map. Encircling the gallery facing inward, the precisely spaced studs reference punk adornments punched through jackets and belts. With this work, Santibañez forges an environment that is at once bodily, domestic, and institutional, encouraging audiences to consider the complexities of these kinds of spaces and the mechanisms we devise to protect them.
Cinturón / Frontera de Tamara Santibañez está compuesto por noventa y ocho tachuelas piramidales meticulosamente pintadas a mano, diespuestas a modo de piezas de la icónica cerámica mexicana de Talavera, perforando las paredes de la galería. Cinturón/Fronterainvita a los espectadores a reflexionar sobre el prolongado juego entre violencia, historia, complicidad y comercio incrustado en nuestras fronteras nacionales e institucionales -desde las barreras de plexiglás del museo, hasta las gruesas líneas geopolíticas de un mapa. Rodeando la galería hacia adentro, las tachuelas piramidales, espaciadas con toda precisión, hacen referencia a los ornamentos punk que perforan chaquetas y cinturones. Con este trabajo, Santibañez forja un entorno que es a la vez corporal, doméstico e institucional, alentando al público a considerar las complejidades de este tipo de espacios y los mecanismos que diseñamos para protegerlos.
Anyone Can Shine
2018
Drawing stylistically from contemporary ASMR videos and the compositions of vintage fetish films, Anyone Can Shine illuminates the sensory aspects of bootblacking, an act of service in BDSM communities.
Director: Tamara Santibañez
Cinematography and editing: Riley Tendersmut
Special thanks to: Rio Sofia
