Tattooing as Self-Care and Resistance

At the beginning of December, I made an appointment to get my first tattoo. It was something I’d considered on and off over the years, but after a good friend of mine got licensed as an apprentice, the time finally felt right. I decided it would be a nice way to start the new year.

Two days before I was scheduled to go in, an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good on the streets of Minneapolis.

My immediate instinct was to cancel—doing something frivolous with time that I could be spending on something productive in response to the shooting or the ongoing occupation just felt wrong. But after thinking about it and talking to my friend, I decided it could be helpful to keep that small window when I wouldn’t be thinking about everything happening here.

My time in Joe’s tattoo chair turned out to be the most mentally healthy hour I’ve had for myself so far this year. At almost every other moment, at least part of my mind has been focused on the violence happening in my state. But just for that hour, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the ink going into my skin. It was appropriate that the design I’d chosen was an ensō, a Zen symbol that represents, among other things, the “no-mind” of meditation—a practice that’s helped me a lot since I started doing it, a bit reluctantly, in 2020. (No accident about that start date.)

My ensō.

Three weeks later, I was heading back to Joe’s studio to drop off food during a tattoo fundraiser he was running. During those three weeks, there had been two more shootings, one of them fatal and only a few blocks from my apartment; I was bringing food from Lu’s Sandwiches and Glam Doll Donuts, two businesses located steps away from the spot where agents killed Alex Pretti. Inside the donut shop, which was giving out free coffee to people visiting the memorial outside, Alex smiled down at me from a painting by the front door.

Joe told me that the fundraiser came in part out of wanting to get more people involved in community support efforts who might not be participating already. “I marched and I donated financial support directly to organizations with broader reach than I have personally,” he said. “But another aspect that was important to me in all this was to help empower others to take action, too. A tattoo event was a way for me to offer a service as a doorway to action.” He donated all the day’s proceeds from tattoos of a Minnesota state outline design to Haven Watch, which has been helping people released from ICE detention at the Whipple federal building—many of whom were never charged with a crime but have been ejected into subzero weather without winter clothing or a way to call for a ride home.

I asked Carrie Rodman, one of the clients who booked a fundraiser tattoo, about her decision to participate. “Like any Minnesotan who is paying attention, I’ve been affected by the terror that has been rained down on our state, especially in the last few weeks. And, like so many others, I’ve volunteered, made donations, kept in close contact with my neighbors and community, and am doing what I can,” she said. “When I saw Joe’s artwork and the organization it would support, I knew this was my next ink.”

She added, “I’m so incredibly proud of how the entire state has mobilized so quickly to protect our communities and how people have stepped up to do what they can. While a Minnesota tattoo wasn’t initially in my body art plan, the meaning—both from the artist, the design, and the reasoning behind it—is solid: Minnesota solidarity, community, and love.”

Joseph Lee/Nepenthes Tattoo

Lots of Minnesota shops, big and small, have been inking symbols of resistance to the occupation onto their clients, and like Joe, lots of them have paired the work with fundraising and other forms of community support. In the days just before and after the Haven Watch event, Jackalope Tattoo and artist Nipinet Landsem at Ishkode Tattoo ran their own flash fundraisers to support Community Aid Network MN and North Minneapolis Mutual Aid, respectively. As Racket reported, Tokki Tokki Tattoo has completed dozens of “Chinga la migra” flash tattoos while offering protest kits and selling “fuck ICE” bandanas to raise funds for families in need. And Weird Ink Society has been donating proceeds from the merch sales on the shop’s website to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

Weird Ink owner Jordanne Le Fae is also donating money to the ILCM from every tattoo she does of the “Rebel loon”—a mashup of the Rebel Alliance symbol from Star Wars and Minnesota’s state bird, many incarnations of which have been posted to the Twin Cities Geeks Facebook group and elsewhere in the weeks since the first version appeared on Reddit. (CBS has already reported on St. Paul geek Sean McArdle’s loon tattoo by fellow Weird Ink artist Mitchell Plisek. Visit the Facebook group and you can find a growing number of others.)

“It’s been so cool to use this form of resistance and rebellion to bring community together!” Jordanne says. “Being as vocal as we are about where we stand with current issues, we have let our clients know that this is a safe space for them to discuss their feelings and use their tattoo as a form of healing.”

She elaborates, “I am not a trained therapist—99 percent of tattoo artists aren’t—and yet people use us for therapy all the time. It feels like the past 11 years of my career has been leading up to this point, helping me build listening skills and learning how to successfully do my job while also providing a safe place for people to come and be themselves. It is incredibly taxing to tattoo and discuss these heavy topics every day … but it is so needed in the community.”

“I do think that one thing all tattoos have in common is that they represent ownership, connection, and expression of the body and self,” Joe says. “And then trusting someone—often a total stranger!—to take part in this really physically intimate process is such an act of radical belief in humanity and community itself … It has been truly nourishing to the soul to take part.”

In case you’re interested in supporting the community through a tattoo, here are a few current opportunities:

• Weird Ink Society will donate 50 percent of monthly proceeds from merch sales to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota until the occupation ends, and owner Jordanne Le Fae is donating $100 from every Rebel loon tattoo she does to the ILCM
• Artist Lauren Megard is donating 50 percent of the proceeds from a designated flash design to the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC)
• Artist Mason Leigh Winckelman is donating 50 percent of proceeds from a set of flash designs in February and March to My Pit Bull Is Family, which is supporting families who are afraid to leave their homes due to ICE and need help with pet care

Correction note: This article previously misstated the artist of Sean McArdle’s tattoo.