Tattooing is traditionally a male-dominated field, associated with dark ink and painful work. But Ray Kim is breaking that stereotype, and incorporating the world of Korean medicine into her tattoo practice. This past weekend she released a book about this process and performed a live tattoo ceremony.
At Casa Barelas, a communal gathering and art space south of downtown Albuquerque, adults and children chat near a campfire. Inside the nearby studio space, Ray Kim is tattooing a spiral around her wrist, the site of an injury. Her new book “Sublime Hallucinations” explores why she sees tattoos as a form of healing.
“I look at every tattoo that I do as a collaboration,” she said. “And it just kind of transmutes things into a more therapeutic place where people can be happy about the decisions that they make.”
Kim is the 2024 Risolana Artist in Residence and this is the final piece of her project. Risolana is a risograph studio located in Albuquerque’s South Valley. A risograph is a duplicator that uses digital or scanned images to create a stencil and print in large quantities.
Michael Lorenzo López co-founded Risolana with Karl Orozco and says it’s a community storytelling space where people can connect with one another.
“That gathering space is the printer, where we can talk about what's coming out of the printer, but then also, once it exists, celebrating that,” said López.
He’s been running Risolana for three years and Kim is their third, and most interactive, resident artist. They seek artists who may be overlooked.
“So Ray, when she had this idea around a tattoo book from a non-Western perspective, that was also a split, kind of like, self-expression and something that's her own personal research, [it] seemed kind of like something that was an obvious choice for us to support, because you don't see that out there all that often, right?” said López.
Kim is first-generation Korean-American. She says she never planned on becoming a tattoo artist, but after doing her first tattoo on herself she realized how interesting the process could be.
She has now been tattooing for almost 20 years and is completely self-taught. She’s moved from pencil lead and a sewing needle to incorporating traditional Korean herbal medicine.
“Mugwort is a highly regarded herb in Korea,” Kim said. “I'm really interested in ancestral rituals, sort of ancestor worship. And there is definitely, like, a new generation of women, they're called Mudang shamans. All of the Mudangs are women. And so the sort of connection of being like a shamanic healer and mugwort is used as a protective herb.”
This is where the idea of “intentional pain" comes in. Kim has dedicated her body, and now her book, to this idea of “healing through pain” and how this process can be magical. She has struggled with chronic pain and illness her entire life, and tattooing has helped her work through that.
“I guess sublime hallucination is when I'm in the midst of a migraine before I had medication, it was so intense, like the pain was so extreme, it felt like half of my face was paralyzed and drooping,” said Kim
In one chapter titled Healers she writes that women have been healers since the dawn of time.
We bring our ancestors into the future. We bring everything our families have ever deemed important to pass down to one another. It feels sacred and purposeful. Like a familiar pilgrimage. The mind and hand work together with Spirit to create protection, healing and strength. My mother says I have always been good with my hands. I call them the Kim family tools. She is good with her hands too: knobbed by arthritis. Mine work the same path. The body makes Spirit concrete.
Her mother, Misuk Kim, attended the live tattooing ceremony. Coming from a traditional Korean background, she was initially unsure of how she felt about Ray’s career, but that’s changed over time.
“Beginning, she was just like a little sketch here, a little sketch there, but now she's kind of like a full blown you know? I love her so much. And you know, tonight is a very special night,” said Misuk Kim.
Risolana created 200 copies of Kim’s book, as well as prints of her art. Folks came for the book release and stayed for the ceremonial tattoo that Kim performed on herself.
With the buzz of Kim’s tattoo machine and the ceremonial healing music, several people described the ceremony as “transfixing” and “magical”. Kim says that was the intent.
