Next Tuesday, November 12, L.M. Kaila invites us to imagine our bodies as a text of scar tissue, burns, cuts and marks, all of which betray our most private lives. Tattooing one’s flesh becomes an editorial process on the body’s inherent capacity to carry stories, secrets, and meanings. Today our bodies are becoming showrooms, branded, trendy and hot. Tattooing has become an exclusive artistic practice that takes place in aseptic studios after processes of googling designs, booking an artist, surrendering one’s body to a professional and sealing the ritual with a monetary transaction. In contrast, Kaila’s tattooing practice stems from her engagement with underground movements and trans-feminist political collectives that share how to communise technologies, transmit knowledge openly and trespass the authoritarian concept of intellectual property by deconstructing the gatekeeping approach of professionalising practices. Through a workshop in DIY tattooing techniques, Kaila creates a space for an intimate ritual of traversing our personal bodily archives. Suggesting the art of tattooing as a self-publishing practice, the artist invites us to return to our bodies as archives. Questioning our relationship with pain and healing, she asks: Can self-inflicted pain become part of healing?

Kaila’s tattooing practice stems from her engagement with underground movements and trans-feminist political collectives that share how to communise technologies, transmit knowledge openly and trespass the authoritarian concept of intellectual property by deconstructing the gatekeeping approach of professionalising practices.