Ink Medicine
The personal rambles and riveting conversations of a tattoo artist with their clients, friends, and idols in a homey setting. This is a podcast about culture from a tattoo table perspective.
Ink Medicine
Ep. 79: Cultural Appropriation in Tattooing with Renée Mak
One afternoon I received a message over IG thanking me for having a page on my website that mentions cultural appropriation in tattooing. I looked at the person's profile and saw that they were a tattoo artist too. This person was Renée Mak. I thanked Renée for her acknowledgement and suggested that we take this conversation onto the Ink Medicine podcast.
It is no secret that the western and predominantly white tattoo industry is still very insistent that tattooing Chinese characters, Japanese body suits, Maori markings, and other Indigenous symbols on a white client's skin is totally fine. Is it? Maybe. Sometimes. In general, not really.
We talk about all of this in great detail.
Renée Mak is a Chinese Canadian queer human, a tattoo artist, a Buddhist, an acrobat and a circus artist, a producer and a writer. The words that come to mind most insistently is that Renée is brilliant and luminous. I could talk to her all day. Enjoy.
Renée can be found on Instagram at @the.magician.tattoos and @disasterclown
Her tattoo studio is @softhearts.studio
You can connect with me, Micah Riot, as well as see my tattoo art on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/micahriot/
Micah's website is www.micahriot.com
The podcast is hosted on Buzzsprout but truly lives in the heart of Micah's website at:
https://www.micahriot.com/ink-medicine-podcast/
nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too um will you um renee? Is that how you pronounce your name?
Renée Mak:yes, yeah, and I wanted to double check is yours mika or micah, micah, micah? Okay, sounds good. That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure.
Micah Riot:sure, and what are your pronouns?
Renée Mak:My pronouns are she, her, and how about yourself?
Micah Riot:They.
Renée Mak:Okay, perfect, where are you coming?
Micah Riot:from today, I am in on Ohlone land in Oakland, otherwise known as Oakland, california, and you are in Canada. Right, I'm in Vancouver.
Renée Mak:The Musqueam, squamish and Tsleil-Waututh unceded territories, because we stole their land so, mm-hmm, so that's where I am. So yeah, we're both on the west coast.
Micah Riot:It looks like yeah, I was looking last night at your your other like social media presence looking at some of your circus acrobatic stuff yeah, yeah.
Renée Mak:When you were like, oh, I didn't know, you do a handstand training. And then I was like I'm pretty sure I didn't put handstand in my google calendar because I usually abbreviate everything. And then I looked into my oh, they must. That's why, when you're like, oh my, my partner is an ex-acrobat, like, that makes sense.
Micah Riot:So they know, hs stands for handstands yeah, literally, I was like hs training could be something else. But who knows? Yeah, yeah it was handstands yeah, but it doesn't seem like you're retired, I like. Looked at some of your posts, it looks like you're still performing I I last performed in september.
Renée Mak:So I I I've only been tattooing. I'm very new at tattooing and I've been wanting to do it for several years now. So this was kind of me putting circus kind of on the shelf, just so that I can actually pursue art and tattooing with a little bit more gusto, because it's something that's always been kind of just at the side of my desk I draw for more therapeutic purposes. And then now this year is the first year I'm actually trying to be a little bit more full ham about it.
Micah Riot:So you're you. I also read that you're transitioning to being a therapist. Yes, yeah, yeah, so I went from being an acrobat to being a tattoo artist. You're going to be a therapist.
Renée Mak:Yeah, that's the plan, although I'm taking a university course right now in therapy and or in psychology, and it's I.
Renée Mak:I'm just testing out the institution just to see whether or not it's kind of the right vibes. Um, I think for therapeutic tattooing I don't need to be a licensed therapist, um, just for the individuals that I'm looking to work with, and then how I'm looking to work with them and yeah, it's just, uh, institutions, and especially the way that they're teaching psychology there's a lot of like Western focused and a lot of colonial aspects to it that I'm not super in line with. So I'm looking at also just doing crisis center training, which is about six months for the training alone, and they really arm you with a lot of skills to be able to work with people in need and in crises as well. So'm looking at that because that might be something that's a little bit more aligned with the purpose of why I want to pursue this education so you want to tattoo therapeutically, like as as what you do, like tattooing isn't going to be like an occasional thing.
Micah Riot:It's like what, how you want to build your practice it what, how you want to build your practice.
Renée Mak:It's how I want to build my practice.
Renée Mak:yeah, just as someone, I am a trauma survivor myself, I, and I know that being able to access different types of services has been really integral to my own healing journey. So I want to be able to kind of just give that back to to the world, just because it's. It's just kind of something I was thinking about in terms of my own career transition, because I also work in the technology sector as a designer, and it just kind of came to this point where the the thing I want to walk away with the most is how I made people feel and the impact that I was able to leave in their lives and then be able to be part of their healing journey. So in therapeutic tattooing, what I want to be able to do is obviously provide safe spaces, but then also be able to provide any kind of cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy, somatic therapy in the actual experience as well, as much as going to be available, just because I know with the tattoo experience it's not the same as when you actually have a relationship with a therapist, where you're going to them repeatedly and being able to deconstruct certain experiences that you're processing. So I know that the practice is going to be a little bit different.
Renée Mak:With that said, I do think that there's space for that because, as you are probably well aware, a lot of folks will often treat tattoo sessions as therapy, and I don't always think that's necessarily fair for a tattoo artist, because they may or may not have the emotional capacity to be able to receive what a client might be giving to them, and they may also not have the skill set to be able to respond effectively as well. So I do see a gap in the industry and I think a lot of other industries also experiences. So hairstylists as well as bartenders they often also do a lot of emotional labor for folks hairstylists as well as bartenders.
Micah Riot:They often also do a lot of emotional labor for folks. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like that's what we get paid for first and foremost, but I definitely um seen on folks like um. I've seen people invite you know backstory for tattoos, including trauma, and I've also seen people say like please don't give me the details, like I just want to know what you want exactly. You know.
Renée Mak:That's all I really want to know what you want Exactly, you know that's all I really want to know at this point.
Micah Riot:So yeah, it is interesting to see how people approach it. You know and I don't know if you listened to. I had a couple episodes. It sounds like you found me through, like my website, more than the podcast.
Renée Mak:I did, yeah, but.
Micah Riot:I did some two.
Micah Riot:I did two podcast episodes with Sarah, who is, I think, medicine.
Micah Riot:Sarah, she's a trauma-informed tattoo artist in Michigan Okay, yeah, another state of the United States and she spoke a lot about that and how she came to it from being a caseworker and working with a lot of houseless populations and it's really cool to see people kind of change careers and go into it from perspective, like not from art being the first kind of seed of it, but from loving humanity, wanting to help humanity as a you know the initial piece of it because, yeah, when I entered the industry in 2008, it was very much like you have to be an artist. And, yeah, as somebody like not trained you know, I don't have formal art training I was like, can I do this? Are people gonna like what I do? And then, of course, you know, found that people saw my value like as a, you know as a conversationalist, as a supporter, as you know, somebody in their corner, like part of their sort of healing team, you know, and that's kind of how I built, you know, my career for the last 16 years yeah, I think that's the.
Renée Mak:The thing with tattooing is that so much of it is about the actual experience itself as well, not just the actual art, and are obviously the art is part of it, but if, if you, it's almost like dating.
Renée Mak:I feel like if you don't really vibe well with your tattoo artists, you may walk away from the experience not feeling necessarily very great and worse, some folks are actually traumatized in their tattoo experiences with the, with the kind of relationship dynamic that may exist between a client and a tattoo artist, and that's something I I don't know. I'm like I would never want to accidentally do that. So I do think that there's a lot of space for folks to be able to to be a bit more mindful about it and I don't know like the industry is just so interesting because it is so diverse, especially across the world as well, and there's been so many kind of evolutions of it and and I'm loving the evolution that I'm seeing now with a lot of like queer and like femmes in the space, more than what has traditionally been there, at least in the westernized nations.
Micah Riot:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I only am familiar with what's here for the most part Right shift in maybe 2012, when I started seeing um, there was a blog called tatrix and the person running it would put out like really cool, very innovative, very different looking art from tattoo artists from all over the world mostly not from the united states and, um, it kind of gave me, you know, kind of gave me this sort of like oh yeah, we're doing things differently now because there's more different kinds of people in the industry and we're more attentive to the client as a human, as a whole person not just like as a piece of skin with a wallet attached to it, and people starting to do other kinds of art dot work, black work, like large scale stuff you know the stuff that looked like scribble, like just trying out different things, um, as styles, because when I was first coming in it was all like Americana type of tattooing, right?
Micah Riot:yeah, I guess you've been in the industry for what might say a hot minute?
Renée Mak:it's been a minute yeah, I mean it's cool, you know it's like my longest relationship with my life.
Micah Riot:Um, yeah, yeah, it's, it's cool. It's cool to be kind of at this stage and be like, oh, you know, cause for the longest time I was like I, I feel like a baby and I still feel, you know, like there's a lot to learn, but I'm starting to feel a bit more like okay, I kind of know what I'm talking about. After like 16 years, I'm starting to feel that way.
Renée Mak:So I can look forward to the entering the same space, and in 16 years, myself.
Micah Riot:Yeah Well, I'm so curious how you know in your um how you view the building of the type of business you're talking about. Like so I I was married to a therapist and he was just starting his practice at the time when we were together, and so we had this idea you know where we're like what if we get the same building and like you'll have your office?
Micah Riot:Right and you will work with somebody you know for a certain amount of time and then you know you come up with an image and like then bring me in to the, you know, to the sessions. It's like part of the whole package, sort of the work that you're doing with that person, that piece of their healing, and then I do the tattoo and that person like kind of like work as a team, as a therapist and tattoo artist team. It was a cool idea. You know, I don't think it's not.
Micah Riot:It's not a good idea, which is for us. That wasn't the path.
Renée Mak:You're like you wanted to do that as one person.
Micah Riot:That's a lot.
Renée Mak:Yeah, it is a lot and I think it's. I also have an interest in in somatic therapy and I, you know, I have Chinese heritage. So traditional Chinese medicine isn't something that I particularly am well educated about, because it is its own branch of medicine that requires a lot of training, but it did grow up around traditional Chinese medicine. It is something that my family does practice, so there are a lot of overlaps with somatics around traditional Chinese medicine. And that is something that was interesting to me is because tattooing itself is a somatic experience and it can be a somatic experience that can be quite dysregulating.
Renée Mak:And I believe that there's ways that we can actually be able to integrate that somatics and then be able to calm the nervous system down as well, so it doesn't feel as dysregulating, to calm the nervous system down as well, so it doesn't feel as dysregulating. And if you know anything about traditional Chinese medicine, a lot of it comes down to meridians and how energy moves through your body. So I am hoping to be able to learn a little bit more about it, in addition to more classical Western psychology, just so that I can kind of blend everything together, because that's just it. It's like no one type of modality when it comes to any kind of therapeutic practice is going to be right for every single individual. So having kind of a toolbox of modalities at my disposal, I think, is going to be a good path, and I may not be necessarily a master in all of them, but at least I can provide a little bit of it.
Micah Riot:So that's, I'm still in very early stages, so right now I'm still trying to get my technique down pat yeah um, are you connecting it also to like acupressure or acupuncture, to like where in the body and how it relates to the?
Renée Mak:yeah, okay, yeah I would want to do that. So, even if it's something where you may not necessarily be getting an image, but it might be a series of dots, for example along certain meridians, where we know that there might be some energy shifts that need to happen, and it might be something that's because tattoos are permanent unless you do get it covered up or lasered, that is something that I do want to do a little bit more research in. So that's why I feel a little bit more comfortable with providing somatics in terms of helping people through different breath work, providing a bit of talk therapy, just being able to hold a safe space for them, as I kind of understand a little bit more about what is the reality of TCM with tattooing, because with acupuncture, while it does work with meridians and you are puncturing the skin, it is not something that's permanent.
Micah Riot:So I do think a little bit more research and patience needs to be involved in that, because it's it's kind of new territory yeah, I took a course in a past life regression diagnosis last year, and so I've been thinking about how to integrate it into my practice more would be really cool.
Micah Riot:Yeah, um right, because people I mean, I have also feel like I've seen, you know, over this many years like kind of you see different things happen in sessions, right, like people might spend the whole session crying, and it's very, um, intentional like they come in and they say, this is what I need to do. Okay, give you full permission. Like I will not stop the check on you unless you need me to. You know, unless you want to stop, like I will just let you do your thing and I'll keep tattooing you. Right, like having intentions be set for that at first, the communication happen and I've seen people's like passed away sort of the you know, the spirits of their passed away people stand over them. I've, like you know, I've had a lot of different experiences in different ways, um, kind of on different planes yeah, it must feel really, uh, powerful to be able to experience that, yeah, and I mean I love you coming into this with all these modalities.
Micah Riot:How did you um come to tattooing in the first place, like, what was your history with tattooing?
Renée Mak:my history with tattooing is actually it was a bit organic, so I have been an artist for a while. So I studied graphic design when I went back to school and I was introduced to drawing as just something that we had to do, but it's not anything I actually pursued when I was in graphic design. I pursued more classical graphic design, branding, as well as data visualization, and then, unfortunately, there were some challenging things that happened in my life when I finished school and drawing became more of a meditative practice for me. So initially it just came to be as more of a fun thing that I would do on the side and then it deeply became something that it was the only way I actually knew how to express kind of my internal experience. And you know, I don't know if you had a chance to look at some of my art, but yeah, so it's. It's a lot of them are self-portraits of myself and just it's just like the way I drew wasn't necessarily something that was particularly technically advanced, just because it wasn't something that I focused on a lot. So my drawings were very primitive at the beginning but because of that they were just very simple line work and I had a lot of folks actually ask me to design tattoos for them.
Renée Mak:Once I started releasing that work and that was just kind of my introduction into the tattoo world where I was asked to design tattoos people would often tell me that my work looked very tattooable.
Renée Mak:And then I had a tattoo from many, many years ago and then I got it covered up because it was associated with some bad experiences that I had in my life.
Renée Mak:So that was kind of my first experience of having a like a more of a therapeutic experience of having something that was deeply traumatizing. And then actually have somebody who to this day is still one of my current tattoo artists and has been a mentor to me throughout my career progression so far, and having someone who is able to hold me in a safe space and actually do the physical act of covering this tattoo was very therapeutic to me. And then after that I began to just start to get more tattoos and kind of just fell in love with getting tattoos and then also fell in love with drawing and what it meant for me. So it was only kind of a matter of time when the two sort of coalesced together, and it was about two years ago when I really started to think more seriously about it, and then it's only in the last year I really started to pursue it a bit more seriously.
Micah Riot:And you said you have a mentor, but are you in a studio with other artists? Do you have a formal apprenticeship or like what? How are you doing it?
Renée Mak:I had a formal apprenticeship and then I left it to just open a private studio with my friend, just because I do want to be able to provide people with therapeutic experiences. I know that sometimes folks are going to come in with some deeply vulnerable things that they're going to want to talk about. And in the studio that I was in before there were 10 artists and it was a very small studio so there wasn't always the privacy that I felt that the clients that I was bringing in needed. So I got a private studio which is actually only about three blocks away from my old studio. So I still go there a lot and I I still just kind of collect a lot of mentors along the way and ask questions.
Renée Mak:I'm going to go shadow a tattoo artist next week and just kind of watch her work and then she's going to watch me tattoo as well. So I'm still very much in the learning processes and and I think it's um I had a couple of not pleasant experiences in that two-year trajectory of looking to learn and get into the industry and because of that I've been, I've been really hesitant of like formal apprenticeships just because of the bad experiences that I've had. So what I've been doing is just kind of reaching out to people who I trust in the industry and learning from them and then just trying to be reciprocal as much as possible in the effort that they're giving me as well I mean, if you don't, if you are willing to talk about those not good experiences.
Micah Riot:I I feel like I get approached a lot by tattoo artists who are starting out and who are, which is cold calling right and they're saying like um, are you available for apprenticeship? And I don't know them, never met them right and I usually respond and I say this is not the way to do it.
Micah Riot:You're going to end up in some bad space, like someone's going to take advantage of you, like you need to go meet people. You need to approach people you know, um and I feel like I say this over and over again you know, and people I feel like people listen sometimes to this podcast who are starting out. So I don't know, like, if you are willing to talk more about your bad experiences, trying to learn, absolutely.
Renée Mak:Yeah. So I actually, when I was starting to want to learn, I was working full time in the tech industry and when I was doing I started to do a lot of research on apprenticeships and just trying to understand how you might be able to get one. And I also talked to my mentor, who is one of the first people who tattooed me and covered up that tattoo and he did a formal apprenticeship and he very much has an attitude of you don't need to do this because his apprenticeship. He didn't have a great experience in it either and he's since become a very successful, wildly talented tattoo artist as well. And for me I just wasn't in a place to be able to not work and have to be able to go to a tattoo studio and not being paid. I just it wasn't a place that was viable for me.
Renée Mak:I was dealing with a lot of mental health issues. It was just really important for me to be able to kind of meet my baseline of needs, that I could shelter myself, feed myself and then also afford mental health services. So that was kind of my top priority feed myself and then also afford mental health services. So that was kind of my top priority. So then what I had done is I actually did some research on just courses, because I also have a lot of strong feelings around apprenticeships and just kind of the internship model that happens to exist in many different industries not just tattoos as well where it does provide an access issue or presents an access issue for people. Where it's kind of folks who are able to afford an apprenticeship, then they're able to kind of enter the industry.
Renée Mak:And if you can't afford an apprenticeship, then you either don't get one or you're going to live a life where you're really suffering for several years and just trying to make ends meet and really burning yourself out of going to, you know, every day to a studio learning but then also trying to work an actual job as well so you can make ends meet, and I just don't think that anybody should ever have to suffer like that, like we don't need to be working 50, 60 hour weeks. That's not. That's not a life that anybody should be living, and I really deeply believe that. So I took a course which ended up being a bit of a scam and and I am always you know, I'm not ungrateful for the experience because I do think through every experience we do learn. So I deeply learned who I don't want to be in that experience.
Micah Riot:Was the scammy part just like the difference of values, or was it literally like you didn't get the, you know, the kind of learning that you paid for?
Renée Mak:It was a little bit of both. So I don't think that I think that some folks may have gotten the learning that they were looking for. I think for myself is I'm the kind of person who I take a little bit longer to learn. I need a little bit more hands-on experience. I'm not someone who just is a theoretical learner. I'm very much. I need to do it in order to learn it, and I just felt like you know, it was a lot of we were tattooing skin very quickly.
Renée Mak:I didn't feel comfortable doing it, nor was I being overseen when I was tattooing skin either, and the individual who was running this course would just kind of go off and be like I got this gig and I have to go and do this gig, and that didn't feel good for me.
Renée Mak:Just because I am a mentor in the design industry, I've mentored designers through different phases of their career and I'm a very involved mentor and I think when you, when you make the choice to be a mentor, you have to be willing to accept the work that comes with it as well, and you know, that's why you know some mentorships they do get paid.
Renée Mak:I get paid as a mentor in the design industry because it is time, it is my expertise and for that reason I'm also going to show up as best as I can because I am being paid for it. So there was a bit of a value misalignment there where in this course, I am paying money, so I do expect somebody to be there Because there is a bit of transaction going on there, whereas more informal apprenticeships, where you're not being paid, I understand. That's why you know you're asking a lot for somebody for their time, their expertise, and you have to ask the question of what are they getting back from it as well? So so that's why I'm like I just I have a lot of attitudes around the apprenticeship model. Where it's there's a lot of inherent issues for all parties involved and I do think that there are different ways that we could be approaching it, but that that course ended up not being great and I was in person or online.
Renée Mak:It was in person and I was introduced to a studio setting where I was able to deeply learn. This is the kind of studio that I wouldn't want to be a part of. So there was an incident that happened where I actually had to call the police on the shop owner on the very last day of class, because someone had come into the shop and it was very clear that they were on some sort of substance, but they weren't being aggressive, and I think with proper conflict resolution skills and de-escalation skills, the situation would have been able to be managed in a peaceful manner. But instead it escalated quite rapidly and culminated in the shop owner just beating the shit out of this guy in the parking lot, which was very alarming for me to see. So I actually ended up having to call the cops to be able to make sure that this person didn't die, essentially.
Micah Riot:So sorry, that sounds so dramatic and die.
Renée Mak:Essentially. So sorry that sounds so dramatic, yeah, so after that I have a lot of hesitations of certain shops and certain personas as well, and I hate that. That's kind of the experience that I walked away from, because I do think that everybody deserves a chance. Nobody deserves any kind of quick judgments and just because someone may physically look like a type of kind of persona that you have a mental model of, it may not necessarily that that's the truth, but that is sort of something that I walked away with and I have to learn to kind of deconstruct it I've entirely avoided men's shops in my career.
Micah Riot:I was able to be in women-owned shops um my whole life, and now I have his privacy yeah. Yeah, I mean I felt so lucky about it. You know like there were definitely like dudes here and there part of the shops, like some you know kind of being artists in these shops, but it was so the structure of like how power went and it wasn't always amazing either. You know like there was a shit that happened Like I got a knife pulled on me by a woman I'm so sorry, my first shop you know, like shit, like people are still kind of, uh, rough and tumble and yeah, and sometimes aggressive and like it's old school.
Renée Mak:Like the old school, tattoo culture is very intense um yeah, which I find very interesting, as because tattooing has a long history that predates it being an industry at all, and I find it kind, of I almost find it interesting that there is this old school, very male dominated thought process around tattooing, which is also a very westernized approach to it as well. Well, whereas tattooing has existed in many tribal cultures for time immemorial as an essential part of how they're able to express the types of communities that they come from, yeah, I mean, it's its own thing here, right?
Micah Riot:And then people like to fetishize and romanticize sort of the quote-unquote tribal styles of tattooing and appropriate them. So now we've gotten to the topic that we originally wanted to talk about and, you know, put more out there about this topic and I think people are more and more interested in learning what is cultural appropriation? How do I avoid it? You know what's appreciation versus appropriation? Why is it bad? You know all of these questions and that you know you can't really download that information. Someone's brain in one conversation who doesn't really understand. But people, I mean people don't think about how our world and the colonization of our world has become. You know, has made every other culture like up for grabs and being appropriated and why that's not okay. Can you speak to that from whatever angle you'd like to?
Renée Mak:Yeah, I guess for me it's.
Renée Mak:Cultural appropriation is something when I was in design school that we actually talked about a lot, and I think it was something that people were always very cognizant of and being very careful of not to culturally appropriate. At the time when I was studying, the Day of the Dead aesthetic was something that became quite popularized in graphic design and it became a subject of conversation of hey, if you actually don't come from this culture, you have to ask yourself whether or not it's appropriate to use the motifs that are coming from the day of the dead and if you even understand the like the, the significance of the motifs as well. So it was. It was a bit of um. It was almost unusual when I entered into the tattoo industry and started to have an interest in it, where I see these two, these two pathways happening in the world, where we do have a lot of conversations and a lot of folks who are very, very, very observant to not culturally appropriate. They're having the conversations, they're being a little bit more mindful about how they're displaying their work and then the tattoo industry, where it almost seems very rampant and there's not as much discourse happening around it and that's. It's almost like this dissonance of not understanding, like why that and and that's kind of a conversation piece of you know can we make change? Can we start to have the discourse? How do we start to have the discourse as well?
Renée Mak:You had mentioned something around what is cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation, and that's something that I think it's just.
Renée Mak:If we have more discourse around it, then I think we'll be able to be able to start to build some community practices and standards of what is going to be appreciative versus appropriation. So I think about Irizumi, for example, where, like as an Asian tattoo artist, I do have people coming to me sometimes asking if I do Asian style tattoos and I do, but I'm very specific about wanting to make sure that I'm only doing tattoos that are specific to my Chinese heritage, as opposed to something that actually belongs to say the Japanese culture. And I think Irizumi is an interesting one, because when I was doing a bit of research on Irizumi, what I understood is that it was a dying art form in Japan because of a lot of the stigmas that come with it. So so a lot of the Irizumi masters they were getting older and they wanted to be able to pass on their practice. So they actually began to go worldwide to be able to teach folks outside of Japan how to continue to keep this culture and practice alive. So for that one.
Micah Riot:Where can you define it? I also I'm not. I'm not exactly sure what it is, and also for listeners. Can define Irizumi.
Renée Mak:Irizumi is the Japanese like the full, like a lot of motifs, very full body suits. It is like very much tied to like the Yakuza culture in Japan as well. So there's still a lot of stigmas that exist around it. Stigma around tattooing still really deeply exists in Asia as well, and I can't speak specifically for Japanese culture as a non-Japanese person, but just as an Asian person. Just generally I do understand that there are still some stigmas that do exist. As I understand and this is just kind of from cursory research is a lot of Irizumi masters because they wanted to make sure that their art practice lives on and because of the stigmas that they were experiencing in Japan, they actually went worldwide to be able to teach other people the style of Irizumi tattooing. So with that one I do think that there's a little bit more leniency of folks who are not Japanese practicing at Irizumi because Irizumi masters themselves, they decided to go abroad and then share that art form and then share the skill and practice as well.
Renée Mak:So but for me as as an Asian artist, I feel like there's there's enough cultural motifs in my own culture that I don't need to borrow from another culture, and I always find that kind of interesting, because I have a friend who she she's of European descent and she'd been wanting a dragon tattoo and was feeling really conflicted about getting a dragon tattoo, because a lot of the dragon tattoos that do exist out there are very oriental inspired.
Renée Mak:But then she started doing research on her own heritage and dragons within her own heritage and was able to understand there's a deep myth, like mythology, of dragons within her own culture. So why not just do the research to understand a little bit more about the motifs that are specific to your culture and then be able to kind of build a tattoo design around that? So I do think that there's space for artists to just really deeply understand, like, what culture do I come from, what is important to me, as opposed to actually borrowing from other cultures do you, when you sort of make decisions around like what will I tattoo, what will I not tattoo?
Micah Riot:and say um, it has to do with another culture that you're you know, not chinese culture, but another type of culture, um, do you think about the power dynamics of kind of like world powers Cause, like, as you said, you know, irizumi, um, japanese style tattooing. It's more widespread, it's more kind of like considered okay to borrow from in, you know, a lot of tattoo culture versus. I think people understand that like, um, african symbolism is so specific, right, where Japanese tattoos are sort of part of the mainstream tattoo culture. Yeah, and then when it kind of comes down to that, I mean I agree with you, like around dragons you know, if a white person was a dragon, we're looking at european dragons, we're not looking at chinese dragons um, but in sort of the sense of like people want koi fish or they want, you know, wind bars or they want maple leaves or whatever. And I'm kind of like, well, yes, there's racism, you know, towards people of color across the board, but like the Japanese are also oppressors, you know. And also like other cultures.
Micah Riot:You know I'm from Russia, I'm a Russian jew um which actually means that I wasn't treated as a white person when I was growing up. Um, but if people want, like russian prison tattoos, I don't fucking care, you know. But if they want, I don't know um, something more specific. Or you know, like, say, hebrew something? You know where it's more specific and the people are smaller and more oppressed. Um, like yeah, no, like not. If you're not of this, you know, if you don't have roots in this culture, do you? Do you make those distinctions or are you just like okay, if you're white, you like stick with european tattoos I, I don't really.
Renée Mak:It's nuance, I suppose, is the answer is you know, like for myself as, uh, as, an artist, there are certain things that I'm not going to tattoo where you, you know, as much as I love. I'm trying to remember the style name. It's at the tip of my tongue. It's like the American Mexican style. It's very popular specifically in, like American Mexican culture.
Micah Riot:You're talking about like kind of West Coast, like black and gray kind of stuff yeah. It's like it was born in uh west coast prisons, I think okay, yeah, talking about it's, yeah, there's like clowns and like clowns um a lot, a lot of um cursive text.
Renée Mak:There's a, there's a specific, there's a specific name for the style.
Micah Riot:It's just um, at the tip of my tongue yeah, we'll figure it out and I'll make a note later yeah, I'll probably wake up at midnight and, just you know, shoot outside please yeah, it'll be one of those 3am things, be like I remembered.
Renée Mak:But you know I love the style, of the aesthetic is really beautiful, but that culture isn't mine, so for myself I would never feel comfortable tattooing it, just because I don't deeply understand what it is like to live as a mexican american um with. You know, in Canada we have a lot of issues with just how Indigenous people have been classically oppressed and are still experiencing a lot of oppression as well, and it's like if somebody were to ask me to tattoo something that was specifically Indigenous or Indigenous inspired, my first answer would just be I would love to help you find an Indigenous artist that is going to be a really well-oriented artist to do this work for you. Just because those artists are going to exist, one and two. That's not the lived experience that I have. The only things that I feel comfortable tattooing are, you know, things that have really not much cultural relevance or something that comes from my own culture, because those are my lived experiences and in the question of somebody who's receiving a tattoo, that becomes kind of a personal conversation that you need to have for yourself.
Renée Mak:So, for example, I actually had a friend who asked me to tattoo something that was indigenous inspired because she had spent a lot of time in the Yukon territories and has a lot of deep-lived experiences with Indigenous communities, so for her it has a lot of personal relevance. So I understand that it is her own choice to tattoo something that is Indigenous-inspired, even though she herself is not Indigenous. She did have conversations with her own Indigenous community be like is this okay? People gave her the thumbs up and I think that's you know, that's really great that she was able to do that work. And then when she asked me, I just I put my boundary and said I really love that this is really meaningful for you and that you've done the work to be able to understand whether or not it is appreciation or appropriation, because it is going to always be a personal experience for other people.
Renée Mak:But I just kind of told her this is my boundary and I will be happy to refer you to other indigenous artists. So I think that's just it. Like, as an artist, I think there's more of a moral responsibility to understand what is appropriation, what is appreciation, and then, as an individual who's receiving a tattoo, that's going to be a bit more of a nuanced conversation and something that you deeply have to have with yourself, because you know we don't know like someone may have grown up in a culture where they may not physically look like it, but they deeply identify with it, and in that case it might be just appreciation as opposed to appropriation yeah, you know, I think it's.
Micah Riot:It's always like a question. You know, I did a dream catcher on a white woman because when she came to me and asked me for it, she said I grew up in New Mexico and there was a dream catcher hanging over my bed when I was a kid and I feel like it's a symbol of safety for me and I said, okay, and I will do this for you. And I don't think I've done one since, you know, because, of course, it's an indigenous symbol here of folks from the lands where New Mexico is now. And yeah, so I'm like.
Micah Riot:It sort of was like one of those moments where I was like yeah, I mean, I guess I get like I'll say yes because you're giving me like a good explanation, but it felt super odd to be the person to like decide. You know, give me like a good explanation, but it felt super odd to be the person to like decide. You know, and in general, I I guess I'm not, I don't know enough tattooers um, I know, you know like to refer people specifically to say like you want indigenous themed tattoo, you should go to this indigenous artist and I also, because of the kind of first topic we touched upon of like how people feel safe or not safe with people. When they've come to me, I trust that I'm the person that's meant to do their piece.
Renée Mak:Right.
Micah Riot:That's not always true, you know, but for the most part it's felt like okay, you chose me, I feel good about you, Like this is the connection that we have, you've established that I don't want to pass you on, I don't want to make you feel like you know like I, I don't want this.
Micah Riot:Go on like kind of hot potato, you know right. So I've generally was on the side of like. If people wanted something I wasn't comfortable doing, I would say I'm comfortable tattooing you, I'm not comfortable doing this piece on you like. Can we change it in some way that will make us both comfortable? Or is there a different piece you'd like to get from me? But kind of like honoring them having found me specifically and the connection that we made specifically as kind of first and then the thing they want as a second, and then or you know, or saying like I would love to tattoo you.
Micah Riot:Here's some ideas I have for what. You know where you're at, um, the specifically cultural piece that you want, isn't it? You know like so, yeah, so like not. If you're on the side of not passing people on, because I've also seen how hurt people get when you try to pass them on- you know absolutely um, and they will like write you off forever. They'll be like you rejected me, I reject you. It's's interesting People take things like that very personally, right.
Renée Mak:I guess you've had a lot more experience in the industry as well. So I think maybe I just haven't encountered that quite yet because I'm still very new in the experience, but I think it comes down to it's always going to be a nuanced conversation, and I think that's the key thing is that there needs to be a conversation that's had. There needs to be a conversation that's had. There needs to be a conversation between the individuals involved, the potential communities involved, as well as a conversation that you have with yourself. So I think even you know, as tattoo artists, we have to have conversations with ourselves of what are we comfortable tattooing and why? And then, are you comfortable to have that conversation with a client and assert your boundary and then be able to establish what are some other potential solutions that we can have?
Renée Mak:And then, as somebody who might be receiving tattoos, asking yourself the question of why am I getting this tattoo? Is it just because I think it looks cool, or is there actually a deep significance to it? And then, how does it impact the communities where the symbology and the motifs may actually belong to? And I think that's it becomes difficult because you know this isn't getting a tattoo is usually deeply personal for somebody. It's not wearing a headdress at Coachella, where it's very clear to be able to identify that as this is behavior that is appropriative. So I think that's just. It is within this industry. We just need to start to have more discourse around it. And I don't necessarily think that that's just. It is within this industry.
Micah Riot:We just need to start to have more discourse around it and I don't necessarily think that that's happening. Yes, uh, not enough. I was gonna bring in, so I did a piece on a woman's hand. It's a blue piece from a russian style of pottery. It's called and it's, you know, um, I'm sure borrowed from the dutch and also from chinese. There's blue painting and right in chinese culture and also in dutch culture and I'm sure others as well. But I posted that reel and it went viral. It was really the only piece of mine.
Micah Riot:I ever had go viral on tiktok specifically, and it got by now I don't know how many, but like six million views at the last time I looked and, of course, the comments were like this isn't yours to do, because it's not actually Russian, it's actually Chinese or it's actually Dutch, and I also, even so, it's a Russian, both the client and I are of Russian descent, russian Jewish descent. She wanted specifically, you know, for that reason, and you know I was a good fit for that right, like it was a good fit for that right, like it was, it was a good, good fit. And then the song I used, uh, for the reel was by a ukrainian artist, and this was right before russia attacked ukraine. And the woman who sings the song that I put on the reel, um, has since stopped speaking russian, singing in russian. She only speaks and sings in ukrainian and has completely, like, separate herself from russia in all the ways.
Micah Riot:This song, however, is in russian, and so the comments I was getting were like you put this song on there, how dare you? She's a ukrainian, you know, artist and singer, and this is a russian tattoo, like how dare you do that? And then, like the style it's not actually russian, it's chinese, or it's this, it's that. And I was like, okay, like being viral is interesting because people have all kinds of opinions, right, and everyone is correct, right, like everyone who was saying something was correct, but also, like I have a perspective, yeah, of how appropriate it was to do the tattoo on this person me, me, me, person who does it. And then the song I chose. I like the song, um, and you know, this was before the war started in Ukraine. But also this woman built her entire career on Russian listeners and from.
Micah Riot:Russian money. So also the time I was like, yeah, there's no problem with her singing the song and anyway, it's just been such an interesting thing to culturally be like, specifically placing myself in a online, especially you know, where people just throw things at you I think that's the thing.
Renée Mak:It's like context matters, and context matters because it it's able to show the nuance where, you know, had the war started before you posted that, you may have made a very different decision of the choice of music, but you posted it beforehand.
Renée Mak:So it's kind of you know, a lot of times in online spaces is everyone's moving really quickly. In online spaces we're not necessarily stopping to critically assess what is the context that's actually happening here and anything. That's just it comes down to like we have to be able to have discourse and and it's it's tough to be online, just because it does open you up to a lot of criticism. Even when we try our best to show up as compassionate, as informed, we're always going to make mistakes and we're always going to be, you know, open for any kind of the reality, and I'm sorry that that happened to you, because that's also tough, because it's it's it can feel very challenging to know that you're doing your best as a human being and then receive a lot of criticism as well. So I'm sorry that that happened to you and I think it's just. You know, we all just have to kind of take a moment and just believe that most people in this world're doing our best. That is, I think, the baseline.
Micah Riot:Most people in the world it's so hard to believe that you know, especially right now on the united states absolutely yeah and to remember that I mean I try, I'm like a pretty judgy person, you know, like there's a lot of things that I um, right away, go, like you know, or like even, or people, like whole groups of people, like white men, like I'm like fuck off. I don't want to be around you. They'll come near me.
Renée Mak:Um, yeah I try as well. It's um. What's really helps me is um, is buddhism, and the concept of reincarnation has really helped me to find more compassion for myself and others as well. Just because you know, the concept of reincarnation is that we are constantly just recycling new life phases until we become the best version of ourselves. So when we interact with somebody who is not necessarily always showing up well, the takeaway that I always have is maybe they're just in life phase 10. And I'm in life phase 40. So there's just a very different set of experiences that are happening here, and when this person's in like phase 40, I'm probably going to get along with them a lot better.
Micah Riot:Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I hear you, you know, but there's also like I just have an immediate like you don't, I don't want my energy going to this, absolutely Like phase 10.
Renée Mak:Yes, and you don't need your energy to go into somebody who's in phase 10.
Micah Riot:Did you grow up with? Did you and your parents speak about reincarnation?
Renée Mak:as a little kid, no, I actually was raised Catholic which is interesting not by my family, but I was put in the Catholic school system because when my parents immigrated to Canada they were kind of brought up with this belief that the Catholic school system was better than the public school system because it receives both public as well as Catholic funding.
Renée Mak:So I don't know whether or not that is a true statement. It's just kind of what my parents had assumed was the truth when they immigrated to Canada. So they put me and my sister in the Catholic school system and they were very hands off with the way that they raised us in terms of religion. So we just grew up Catholic just because we were in the Catholic school system. And then I actually discovered Buddhism a few years ago when I was going through my own kind of healing journey with trauma, and it's something that has just been able to help me so much in terms of finding compassion for myself, finding compassion for other people and then just to be able to build the skills to regulate as well. So that's more of a new life thing that has happened.
Micah Riot:Is that a daily practice for you? Do you meditate daily?
Renée Mak:I don't meditate daily, but I do have just kind of like daily reminders that are just kind of scattered within my daily life. So on my phone I have statues of deities in my home, even though I don't necessarily practice in a theistic way. But it's just seeing the deities in my home reminds me of the practices of Buddhism, that remind me to take it into how I'm interacting in the world and with other people. I still make mistakes. I'm still, I'm still gonna be, I'm still a douchebag sometimes. I mean.
Micah Riot:I'd hope so, you know.
Renée Mak:Yeah.
Micah Riot:How boring would it be to be like perfect and enlightened all the time.
Renée Mak:Exactly, yeah know. Yeah, how boring would it be to be like perfectly enlightened all the time. Exactly yeah, well, if you do, then you're just not going to reincarnate because you've reached.
Micah Riot:You've reached enlightenment what do you think happens after you've done reincarnating?
Renée Mak:I don't know. That's a. It's a good question. I think you just find peace and then just wither away back into the world, as as like a tree or something, or grass, but in many different molecules.
Micah Riot:In the course that I took last year, which I'm sure some of it maybe is based on some sort of like stolen Asian something. But you know, it was kind of mostly just sort of whitened. But the teacher spoke about how she found she you know she would do these sessions with folks and one time she entered a past life with somebody who was a tree branch laying on the forest floor for hundreds of years.
Renée Mak:Oh wow, yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, that is really cool. Hopefully no one ever stepped on that tree branch.
Micah Riot:Or if they did. You know, it's a tree branch, it's like sturdy, it's fine yeah.
Renée Mak:But I wonder you know it's like, if it's a tree branch, it's like sturdy, it's fine, exactly yeah. But I wonder you know it's like if you're a tree branch, how do you die? What happens? I think you just slowly disintegrate, which is kind of like the nature's way of dying in your sleep, I suppose.
Micah Riot:Yeah, that's uh, it's quite a thought, like it seems, uh like a prison like thing to me, but maybe it is um the epitome of enlightenment. You just get to be, just be and nothing else.
Renée Mak:You just be and nothing else, and then you get to just kind of soak in the nature as well.
Renée Mak:There was something I was thinking about just in terms of back, just to circle back to the topic around, cultural appropriation was kind of I'm curious just in terms of even your thoughts of it's like artists versus clients and the choice to get a tattoo of a specific motif and the choice to tattoo in a specific style as well, and I almost feel like there's a bit more responsibility on the artist side where, even for myself, like I don't mind seeing Asian style tattoos on non-Asian people, because I don't know that person's personal story, I don't know if they may have lived in Asia for a long time, they may have a lot of deep resonance with the culture for different reasons, but I think it's just, you know, you had kind of talked about power dynamics and I think that's something that's really important, where when we enter into the industry as an artist and this becomes a job and there is a bit of transaction that's coming in and you are making a living from it.
Renée Mak:I think this is where it gets a little bit more nuanced and where that discussion needs to happen. Where you know, for myself is I would never tattoo indigenous motifs because indigenous people and artists are so oppressed in Canada already and probably in other parts of the world. So it's you know, I would not feel ethically right making a profit on something that comes from a culture where they're already being oppressed, and I think that's kind of a question that needs to happen with artists. Is you know, where does that, where does that exist within the environment that you live in?
Micah Riot:Because it's going to look different for every environment right For sure, the context is going to be different. The types of people around you that are experiencing oppression are going to be different, exactly.
Renée Mak:Yeah.
Micah Riot:Yeah, and I mean, sometimes as an artist it's a, you know, sometimes it's an easier choice to make right Like sometimes it's really clear. Know, sometimes it's an easier, uh, choice to make right like sometimes it's really clear, sometimes it's less clear. Um, somebody recently, a woman who was who's, I believe she's half mexican and she wanted those mexican like flags you know that they're cut out flags, um, and we talked about it some and I was like, well, is there maybe a way you can get this from somebody who is, who shares your heritage?
Micah Riot:And because she wanted to do some. I do a lot of abstract work and that's kind of what a lot of people come to me for. And she was like, well, I want your abstract work, but I also want these flags, and you know. And I was like I don't know, it's like think about it. And she was like, oh, I'm going to Mexico, I'm do this for me. And so she did. She went to mexico and she got the flag part there and then came back and had me do the abstract work. And that was kind of easy, right. Because she was like, let me think about it, I'm open to thinking about it.
Micah Riot:Oh, I'm gonna go to mexico, like I'll take this opportunity and I'll, you know, go to the place where my ancestors are from and do this the way that it should be done. Um, and somebody else, uh, you know. Then I have a client who is indigenous and mexican. She's an older woman um, not not too much older, but she's middle-aged and she has been coming to me for 16 years and I'm the only person she's ever been tattooed by that's amazing yeah, and so she.
Micah Riot:You know, we're working on um kind of first we had different pieces happening and then we kind of started piecing them together into like more of a sleeve and I doing some work on her chest and kind of all over her body right over 16 years, and she wanted different, more culturally specific things. But she is so set on me, you know, I wasn't going to be like go find somebody else, you know. Yeah, and so with her it's, and I'm like okay, you're an indigenous mexican person, you're very aware of your own culture, your own self, like you're not ignorant, you're. You know what I mean. So yeah, yeah it's. I mean, but yeah, I totally agree with you like white people should not profit from the art and culture of um oppressed folks yeah, and that's always an interesting one because I think it's.
Renée Mak:This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot is just like my space in in just being a person of color, and for a long time I didn't even define myself as a person of color because I didn't feel like my experiences were racialized enough as opposed to black and indigenous folks, especially in Canada as well in the United States, and that's something that's you know. When I, when I started reading more about the model minority myth and where it comes from, I started to deeply understand a little bit more of the experiences that Asian folks have. And now I do consider myself as a person of color and I also understand that the model minority myth was purposely fabricated to drive a wedge between folks of various cultures that weren't white and anything. That's always something that's kind of interesting as well, as you do see a lot of folks who aren't of Asian heritage tattooing in Asian styles and and that's always like it makes me a bit uncomfortable, just because I feel like folks should choose to tattoo in other styles and not profit.
Renée Mak:But then I also understand that Asian folks, especially in westernized nations, often are in a socioeconomic privilege space. But then we have to dig deeper into it as well and understand well that comes from the immigration policies that exist that are only allowing folks of a certain socioeconomic class with educational background to be able to come to these countries as well, whereas if you actually go to asia, there's a lot of deep poverty that exists, and poverty that is you can't even compare it to poverty in north america. So I think that's always kind of like a difficult one to be able to straddle and I never want to tell artists what they can and cannot do. But I just I hope that artists will just kind of ask themselves a little bit more critical discourse of why do I want to tattoo in this style? What does it mean to me? And you know, am I taking work from somebody where this motif actually means a lot more to them?
Micah Riot:I mean, I wish you know the, but the kind of majority of tattoo culture like, if you're even like looking online at I don't know, popular tattoo podcasts, right run by big name dudes and like the way they speak. They don't give a shit. They don't give a shit about anything but making money.
Renée Mak:Yeah I think it will change, hopefully I'm hopeful.
Micah Riot:I mean it's changing in the sense that there's less of them and more of us, and I'm putting us in a category of like queer and not born with male privilege and not raised in um specific places of privilege of money and education. Um, like I'm an immigrant. I came here when I was 12 years old you know, like so us meeting people with different experiences other than straight male tattoo artists yes, mostly white, yeah, and I mean they're scared. You see them.
Micah Riot:You see them talking shit you see all these baby tattoo artists, like with their private studios, like the, the kind of the tropes that they've invented about. Yeah, how much like we suck and they roll and yeah how we don't deserve our clients and our you know, if we charge a higher rate than them. Um, and like, the reason I have to charge a higher rate than them is because you know I have.
Renée Mak:I have more overhead because I'm spending money on a private studio and I'm spending money on like snacks for my clients and blankets for my clients and all those kinds of things yeah, I kind of see it as, like they they'll go the way of blockbuster, where you either adapt because the world is adapting or you will become blockbuster you're talking about the business of Blockbuster that just died. Yes, the actual business of Blockbuster. I think there might be one still in existence in the United.
Micah Riot:States. I know it's like a relic.
Renée Mak:Yeah, I think they have a Twitter account, still something like that. Amazing, how old are you?
Micah Riot:I'm 37 myself. Okay, okay, I would not have known at all. I would have been like, like you could be 25, I know I got those.
Renée Mak:I got the, the genetics that just don't age until I look 80 amazing. Yeah, I'll turn 80 and then I'll look 100 and then you, then you'll have the.
Micah Riot:You know the trouble of being very wise, exactly. Yes, people come to you and kiss your feet and yeah, I will be the tree branch on the floor yeah, that's next lifetime, that is yes, if I do well in this lifetime, yeah, yeah how do you feel as a queer person of color uh, newer to the tattoo culture, and also, like I'm gonna assume, that canada, the canadian scene, is a little different from the scene here, and I don't know if that's true. I don't know.
Renée Mak:Yeah, I don't have enough experience outside of Canada, but I I feel deeply supported in my locale and and I will identify like I live in Vancouver, which is, you know, one of Canada's larger cities. It is also West coast, so it is also one of the more progressive cities there's. There's a very rich queer culture here. There's a lot of asian folks on the west coast as well and a lot of asian folks who are involved in a lot of critical discourse and just being able to identify that. You know, asian people's racialized experience does exist and here are what here is what it looks like. I feel really deeply supported just in terms of being like a person of color and also being a queer person. And and I think it's like I'm lucky because I am in Vancouver and that's where my career is starting right now is that you know I'm the next week I'm going to like a femme queer oriented space to shadow a tattoo artist and I what's the space? It's called the northern collective.
Micah Riot:Okay I'm always like thinking about places to go and um guest you should definitely come up here and guest.
Renée Mak:We're in the same time zone, so you won't even have to worry about I mean, I'm not even worried about that, it's primarily, you know, I want to go places where I can find my people and right comfortable and yeah you know, learn something from the folks around yeah, vancouver's really great.
Renée Mak:Just um, I tattooed uh, I guessed at one place in Toronto, which wasn't an amazing experience and I think that was more just uh. I, you know, was just looking for a place to be able to tattoo, um, and they had a bed that was available. It was within my price range to be able to rent, so I just kind of went for it. Uh, and it wasn't an amazing experience, it was an affirming experience of. These are the types of places I don't want to be involved in. This is the type of person I don't want to be as well.
Renée Mak:Um, so I think, just with every bad experience, there's always opportunities just to be able to affirm. I never want to show up like this, because this is how it made me feel when this person showed up this way. Um, but I do. I, as, as far as I know, toronto's got a fairly good active queer scene as well in the in the tattoo industry, um, but in vancouver it's, we have a lot of really really great artists and a lot of great like asian tattoo artists as well that are queer. So there's a couple of collectives that exist here that are specifically like queer Asian collectives, which is really cool.
Micah Riot:And the collectives are members from different shops, Like y'all just kind of hang out together Like that's a novel idea for me. I'm like we don't have any fucking collectives Like people.
Renée Mak:Yeah, it's more. It's more. Rent is really expensive here. So people just kind of band together to you know, you'll, you'll have like a private studio that is this many square feet, and then you'll just as artists you just kind of band together, be like all right, we're going to share this space, share rents and then share the beds as well. So myself, I, I share my private studio with another queer asian artist as well and we've known each other for many years. I I reached out to her eons ago when she was like she does hand poke tattoos and then I was just starting to get interested in tattoos. We became friends and then we just kind of started thinking about hey, like our work ethic really aligns, our values really align, maybe we want to share an art studio together. And then one just kind of came up, so it was perfect. It almost felt really serendipitous. So I studio together, and then one just kind of came up, so it was perfect.
Renée Mak:it almost felt really serendipitous, so I feel very lucky there, yeah, and then, uh, we actually tattooed at um it was. It was called another gay market, so that was just a few weeks ago. It was a completely like queer oriented market and it was held at sailor circle, which is um an indigenous owned community venue, and that was really cool. So, yeah, there's. I don't know what the scene is like in oakland, but we have like a very vibrant queer scene here, so you're always welcome to come and visit yeah, I would love to do that.
Micah Riot:Yeah, I would love to do that. I'd love. I will ask you later for like names and stuff to write down.
Micah Riot:I was gonna say if you are interested in coming to the united states to guest my rec, I mean you could come to my space if you wanted. To. The issue with my private studios I don't have a huge following and so I think it's harder for guest artists to get appointments because, yeah, if you don't have a big following and you start to post, it's just not going to get as much reach. But I would be happy to make space for you if you wanted to come down here. But I was going to say I guested at Butterfat Studios in Chicago last year. Okay, butterfat, very specifically because Esther Garcia, who owns it, is somebody I've been following since I was a baby tattoo artist. I think she's incredible.
Micah Riot:And she is really interested in how melanin skin interacts with color and she does studies on that and she experiments and you know very respectful ways where she offers like other options besides, you know, like if someone's really dark skin.
Renée Mak:Mm-hmm.
Micah Riot:You can have red or green, that's it. You know like she really just like takes a lot of Time and energy to like explore, experiment, learn about pigment, about skin.
Renée Mak:Mm-hmm.
Micah Riot:She like blew my mind many times when I was there for the week. Um, but her space, you know she, the space she owns, it's all women and it's a private studio and they have a following. So I got a lot of appointments just from posting um posting with their. Yeah with their space. But she's brilliant and her space is so beautiful and like lovely I would love to keep that in mind.
Renée Mak:Uh, I feel a little scared to go to the United States these days. I understand, yes, but I will eventually come back.
Micah Riot:You are always welcome here, thank you, I want to, I would like to.
Renée Mak:I feel nervous to guest still at this stage of my career, but I know that I will get there eventually.
Micah Riot:I mean I feel nervous at this stage in my career. You know, know that I will get there eventually. I mean I feel nervous at this stage in my career, you know, and I, you know the few times that I've approached shop owners, every time I send an email I'll be like I won't hear from them or I'll hear from them and I'll be like no right, you know, like I'm not good enough to be at their shop and like, literally every time they've been like yeah, anytime, like I time, like I don't think it's because of me. I think shop owners tend to, if they have the space, they tend to want guest artists to come through renee. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I feel like we could talk all day about these topics and other topics.
Renée Mak:Um, I really appreciate your willingness and um, I, yeah, I feel like I should have a follow-up yeah, thank you so much for having me on this and just being someone in the industry that is having the discourse that needs to happen and then creating a platform to be able to actually bring it out into the world, because if the discourse is happening behind closed doors, sometimes it doesn't go anywhere and it doesn't make an impact in the industry. So I really appreciate just the work that you're doing, your energy and just who you are as a person Seems pretty rad.
Micah Riot:Thank you, so I appreciate your appreciation. I feel like I you know not. I have not heard a lot of people like say out loud that they clients, yes, but not other tattoo artists.
Renée Mak:And okay.
Micah Riot:So the last question for you for the episode is what are some small things? A small thing or some small things that have been making you happy lately?
Renée Mak:I think some small things has just been time with friends and slowing down enough to be able to actually really enjoy that time with friends.
Renée Mak:I think we live in a society that's so fast paced that you'll be like I have an hour for coffee and then you're kind of running to the next appointment, Whereas when we're able to slow down because as a baby tattoo artist, my books aren't like booked solid sort of thing so it means that I've actually been able to slow down in life a little bit I'm not as busy, I'm not working full time in the tech industry right now and it's allowed me to just connect with my friends in a deeper and more meaningful manner, which has a lot to me that's making me happy to hear that you have been able to set up your life um with some space in it, without the judgment to your survival yeah, I actually saw your instagram post today in your in your story and it's like if we, we could all just work 15 hours a week and then like we really could yeah I was very much not for a few billionaires, yeah, yeah, it was very much a thumbs up, I guess.
