Nehren 8
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Now known as Dr. Lakra, the young artist acquired the name very early in his career due to the antique doctor’s bag he would carry with him which held his machines for tattooing. He chose the name “Lakra,” which is Spanish for scar of blemish, and is also slang for delinquent (Malbert p. 230). Best known for taking antique and retro images from magazines and postcards, and turning the seemingly innocent and “pure” bodies into works of art. His works are very similar and often related and compared to ready-mades in the sense that Dr. Lakra does not go out and create the human canvases he works on, but rather these figures already formed and places his personal touch and markings on them.
An avid collector of diverse objects, Lakra views the search for materials and images as an essential aspect of his practice. His compositions combine historical references and contemporary images, incorporating quotes from popular culture, interwoven with religious and social iconographies. The way he juxtaposes and refashions these various elements reveals a deep understanding of art history, as well as a subversive sense of humor. Dr. Lakra dismantles and subverts dominant ideologies to question what is considered civilized or barbaric, correct or innocent, “high” or “folk” art (Kurimanzutto para. 1).
As in three of his works from 2004, Untitled (Films), Untitled (Maria Montez), and Untitled (Emana), Dr. Lakra has revived these forms from the past, marking them with skulls, faces, spiders, demons, and death. Untitled (Films) is a portrait of Evelyn Knapp, an American actress who stared in many B-movies and cliffhangers; having a thriving career in the 1920s and 30s, then tapering off into the 1940s, Knapp left a legacy of films and photographs in the media of the time. Her cause of death in the early 1980s was recorded as unknown and remained undisclosed with a timely cremation shortly thereafter. Dr. Lakra adorns her body with symbols of death: skulls live on her shoulder and hand and in the smoke around her face, a knife is drawn piercing her chest, chains wrap her neck like fine jewels, snakes looking to devour her like Cleopatra, and the unlucky number “13” at her temple above a drawn tear from her eye (Abaroa et al. p. 11). Yet, the major elements of contrast is the angles’ wing coming from one half of her chest and the bats’ wing from the other half, as well as the tattoo on her right hand that spells “PUNT-” (Abaroa et al., 2010, p. 5). Knapp lived a life that left no scandal to tarnish her reputation, yet Dr. Lakra took the opportunity to create as much with the markings on her body; as he works to create the aversion of empty space with tattoos on her naked skin, Dr. Lakra turns the bright-eyed Hollywood actress into a dark and fearful image as he transitions her from innocence to darkness and a new sense of empowerment (Amirsadeghi p. 180). No longer is she pure and empowered by goodness, she radiates contradicting empowerment, as though it were bestowed from hell, for she is autonomous from the viewer but a slave to death as her tattoo “PUNT” may actually say “PUNTA,” which is Spanish for “end” or “tip.”
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