MonkiWarrior
2020 Private Tattoo Studio
I have been tattooing for over ten years in various contexts. This space, Monkiwarrior Tattoo Studio, is designed to offer people an alternative to the typical tattoo shop experience of hardcore music and old school tattooing. My studio provides a calm and soothing environment akin to a meditation studio or spa. Tattooing is a spiritual and transformative process, and as an artist, I’m privileged and responsible for guiding my clients through such an experience. I am honored to tattoo people and do everything in my capacity to facilitate meaningful experiences for every one of my clients.
Each tattoo is custom-tailored for the individual, and the projects have a lengthy design process. I try to involve the client at each step through the design process and prioritize their personality into the concept design over my own. Besides providing technically and visually strong tattoos, I am also developing technological interfaces to aid the individual in pain management and make the overall experiential side of tattooing more pleasing.
Codon Chart
This tattoo is an artistic representation of the codon chart, a reference tool used in translating genetic code into an amino acid sequence. The client and I chose to use various building blocks of a protein: alpha helixes, beta sheets, loops, and amino acids to construct this concept. He is a biomedical researcher, and this tattoo needed to be an accurate reference material for his work. Every bit of information from the codon chart is color-coded into this tattoo.
Sea Shepherd x Endangered Whales
The concept behind this tattoo stems from a belief in conservation efforts for marine life. The tattoo is for a chef who is passionate about the Sea Shepherd’s work, an anti-poaching / anti-whaling organization. Our goal was to pay homage to the various endangered whale species. The tattoo represents blue whales, humpback whales, right whales, pygmy whales, and sei whales encapsulated within a sleeping sperm whale. This tattoo is part of a larger sleeve centered around the aquamarine life that we are working on.
Japanese Snake X Samurai Frog
This tattoo presents a samurai frog and snake team, characters that are often portrayed as oppositional to each other in traditional depictions. The client wanted to retain a touch of traditional Japanese style in the tattoo while also modernizing it with micro realism. The tattoo is compact with meaningful detail, and as can be seen in the initial sketches, has gone through many iterations before reaching this final form. We completed the tattoo over two back to back sessions totaling 11 hours.
American Bald Eagle
This tattoo represents America for the client wearing it. He is born to American parents in Taiwan and considers himself a dual nationality individual. For this tattoo, he flew in from China to get this tattoo done by an American artist. I find it beautifully American that I got to do this tattoo for him as an immigrant to the United States. As a dual citizen myself, I was honored to do this tattoo for him. He has a phoenix on his opposite shoulder done by a Chinese artist. It was essential for us to match the other bird’s anatomy and how it moves on his body while also making the eagle distinct and characteristic of his symbolic sentiments behind this tattoo. The tattoo was done over two back to back sessions for a total of 13 hours.
Palestinian Blue Lupins X Anemones
Childhood memories of fields of anemones inspired this tattoo for a homesick Palestinian person. She wanted to cover up an old tattoo of some text she had done at a younger age. We used blue lupins to layer over the preexisting tattoo and composed this floral composition for her. We redesigned the name from the preexisting tattoo in a simpler font for better longevity and placed it on the inside of her wrist as a flourish to the flowers.
More Projects…
Poetics of Inquiry
Sensory Augmentation
Bacterial Consent
Dear Other
On Breath
On Work
On Language
Rootnetwork
Head Space
I Wish To Tell You Something
Can You Hear Me?
On Time
Being Binary
On Space