Ancestral Work Through Ink: Agose and Karungari on Body Modification

Written by Seise Baĝbo

(An excerpt from the poem “Let Us Open The portals” from Waiyaki’s How To Change Your Life by Getting a Tattoo: a guide to worldbending collection.)

What is mine is mine,
And what is yours is yours.
We meet, here, in this tender space of transformation.

together we shift; together, we become; together we transform into something greater than we have been before.

It’s been four weeks since the Metattoo event (curated by Waiyaki, Agose, and KK) occurred. I sat down with KK, alias Terrestrial Tattooist or Karungari, and Agose to reflect on the kind of joy it brought and the heaviness it was. The amount of ritual work and sturdiness it took to make the space physically safe and energetically. This wasn’t just about a vibe check but also being aware of the vulnerability it takes to expose yourself like that.

This was KK’s first but Agose has done it a few times.

On the 17th of May, 2024, all roads led to the Cheche Bookshop for the Metattoo event organised by Metamour featuring KK, Agose, and Waiyaki. These three waxed an event to share their practice as body artists and what their journeys as queer artists have been.

On 4th June, I sat down with Agose and KK to talk about their work in body modification and how this Metattoo event came to us. (When we started, the “half” from my conversation with Bakhita and Muthoni Ni Mimi interrupted us again but this time around, they didn’t stay through because I promised him an interview soon.)

First, Metattoo was supposed to happen last year and then tragedy struck. Agose and Erica (another member of the Metamour collective) got kidnapped and had to upend all their work to create room for feeling and healing. So when this year came and Metattoo was finally a dream realised, it came with so much excitement.

I was to attend this event, and then, between anxiety, adulting, and other things, I had to stay at home in bed. When I set up a virtual call, I didn’t know I’d not only be taken through all the emotions involved in bringing a show to life but also bear witness to a labor of love, a place of consistently giving self as an offering. I wasn’t aware that tattoos called for this much emotional work and KK told me how it is exposure to willingly shed blood. A form of bloodwork.

KK has been doing a lot of ancestral work that has hugely influenced how he interacts with tattooing. It spoke to me about the openness it has required to create and still simultaneously protect itself concerning what it energetically picks from its clients or gives to them. This is a perspective shared so deeply by Agose, too, because they also do tattooing as a spiritual practice, and so the exchange of energy and protection required goes as high as the stakes of what all the work is. The skill it demands to create work that is also up to par. Work that is aesthetically pleasing.

KK and Agose are very steeped in socialist and anarchist practices, and this has caused a struggle with what it looks like to trade within a capitalist society. A place where everything should be sold and, as people who work within it, what having to survive looks like. Both of them have worked with bartering to maintain the integrity of their work, for their sake and the work itself, treating all their work as an offering and an altar where gifts of all sorts are welcome and valued. Sometimes these gifts are food, experiences, or even money.

This doesn’t cover how we exist in a capitalist system that charges for everything, including your being here. I guess this forever remains a question that cannot be answered individually but collectively. A new social order on why “earning a living” is a setup when the majority of the things you need to thrive here don’t need to be earned and yet, are still sold.

(We get to the rapid-fire questions and all my beautiful guests want to run. When I finally talk them into it, I know they accept unwillingly and laugh. The “we don’t trust you” laugh. We do it.)

Baĝbo: Are you happy?
Agose: That’s not chill, that is not chill!!!
(Laughter…)
Yeah.
KK: I am, too. I’m happy and I’m many other emotions in the same state as well.

Baĝbo: When was the last time you cried?
Agose: Like two days ago.
KK: Me too, I think.
Baĝbo: Criers, hahahaha! The Cancer and the what?
KK: The Scorpioooo!!!
Baĝbo: Oh my god! (Laughter)
Agose: Water, all water.
I feel like recently, I’ve been crying in my heart, you know what I mean? I feel like I get so overwhelmed with emotions and it, like, I feel like those count as tears.
KK: Me, too. My dreams have also been feeling like that. I’ve been crying and I feel like I’m still crying.

Baĝbo: What are you mourning?
KK: Everything and nothing.
Agose: Yeah, everything is dying around us.
KK: Yoohhh!!!
Agose: Yeah, recognising that you’ll still be okay.
KK: I’ve really cried about that. And the newness is so strange. It is also scary. It’s like, what the fuck do we do now? Who is this? What do you like doing, what do we like? I’ve realised I’m also struggling with forming connections, it is very heavy. I’m going through too much grief and I don’t know how to hold space. What are you grieving Agose?
Agose: I think I’m grieving the things I’m used to. Like the way I’m used to my brain working, I feel like it doesn’t work like that anymore and it is making me panic. Are we gonna be okay? Like, how else can we show up? I have no idea, and I realise that I have to live through it.
KK: It’s wild to me because we have access to so much information and yet we have this state of control and unease. We have so much humanness in us and I can imagine what it is like for someone who feels all of this and doesn’t know how to navigate them, it must be a lot.

your power is your power; 
my power is mine.

our presence empowers each other, and from it we craft our futures.

from here, only we say where we can go;

Baĝbo: Who was the last person you forgave?
KK: Myself (sing-song). That’s a real one because I cried.

(I interrupt normal programming to say that KK is the Cancer and we all know the waterworks in that department. Okay, resume.)

KK: Am I hitting my Saturn return? I’m asking Agose because I’m turning 27 this year. 
Agose: Where is Saturn in your chart?

(We dive into KK’s chart.)

Agose: At 28.
Baĝbo: But it has started smelling you because mine started at 27 and so it went into full kick-ass mode at 28. Wueh!
Agose: Baĝbo, can I ask how your Saturn return has been so far?
Baĝbo: I’ve lost things I didn’t even know I had. I thought it would be easy because I did my proper shadow work and my initiation that had emptied myself completely. The suddenness of it has been the real killer. To wake up to loss every morning. I was told I’m still in the periphery of it and have four more years of this, I told them to not test my will to be here. Please don’t threaten me.
(Laughter)
It has been a consistent loss of things I didn’t even think I had or owned. Deep deaths. I resigned from my work today and thought I was in a crisis. Still, I believe everything is a necessary loss. I always thought I’d never write a book for all my 27 years and last year, I wrote a book to contain what this one year has been, of what the hell is happening to me. Endings.

(We go on to talk about messages that come to us through dreams and KK talks to us about his work as a dream worker as it is tied to their ancestral work. Our personal dreams and moments the universe knocked sense back into us. We also talked about the last time we peed in bed and how it speaks to our state of mind.)

Baĝbo: With tattooing, what’s your favourite technique?
KK: I enjoy my work and organic work. Especially if it’s line work, I enjoy it being organic. I love doing anything that is about creating a world. For example a door with a mouth or an eye.
Agose: I’d say at least in the past I’ve been using lines to explore. There is a lot of focus that happens in line work and dot work. The way you can focus through those. Also, shading.
Baĝbo: You do handpoke, stick and poke?
Agose: Yeah, stick and poke/handpoke. In those I’ve found going for simpler designs allows me to get through the process and also do the energy work behind it.
Baĝbo: Stick and poke, or machine in terms of preference?
KK: I do stick and poke on myself because I feel like I really take time with stick and poke because it depends on the movement of your hand. I’m also more comfortable breaking my own skin. I also enjoy using machine. It’s still comfortable and also fast and I enjoy fast things. On stick and poke, I want to get more into it, the time it takes to go into it.
Agose: I mean, I have a bias. I couldn’t let people tattoo me and then I got the machine and the shading felt really good like an itch was being scratched. With stick and poke, the pain is very focused and you have to be there for all of it. Every sensation will have you travelling. And sometimes I just want to shade and the shading with the gun is very good. It is also fast.

Baĝbo: In terms of books, audiobooks, ebooks or hard copies?
Both: Hard coppiiieeesss!
(We laugh)
Agose: And audiobooks.
KK: I want to learn how to do audiobooks but my brain loses focus very fast. So if it’s not visually stimulating as well, I’ll just oop! Disappear. That’s why I like books because it has given me something to feel.
Baĝbo: Which book would you recommend of all the books you’ve read?
(They argue this all the way down to books they’ve read in the last month.)
Agose: The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar.
KK: We’ve Been Here, a story of older queer people in their 50s and older. It is written and edited by Kevin Mwachiro, Peter Irungu, and Nguru Karugu.

(I squeal and Agose wants to know where to get it. It is now my current read.)

They are being given out at Cheche Bookshop, and it has changed my life. It has really made me realise I want to document us more.

(We get into a conversation on the importance of queer folk documenting themselves in the now. Without waiting for our stories to be unearthed years later by people who will co-opt us to what suits them. To say it without question that we are here. With our everything.)

Baĝbo: If this was it, what would be your summary of being here?
Agose: Damn!!! First of all, I’d be like, what? That was so anti-climactic. I’d also be okay. I feel like wherever I’d be going I’d be thinking of what time I wanted to go. I don’t know, I don’t think I’d want to go yet. But, it’s okay, I don’t know who is deciding. Me, I’m here. I don’t know, there’ll be so many unanswered questions.

(This is ironic because they ask me what the question was.)

What was the question again? How would you react? Ama?
Baĝbo: No, what would be your summary? Like, if I asked you how was it, what would you say?
Agose: Oh, how was it? Hard. The moon and the sun are great. Food is so nice. Food is so fucking good. 3 stars just because, literally, I could have gotten more.
KK: 3 out of?
Agose: 3 out of 5 just because I could have gotten more. 3 because it was okay, it was an interesting experience. Lol, oh my god!
KK: Wow! Summary is wild. I’m literally turning 27 in a month. So this question is funny. 26 has been wild.

(I break into one of the many American songs that talk about the fireworks on the 4th of July.)

When the year began I made the decision to be alone. Alone in the sense of not trying to escape through someone. Eh, nimelia (again, Cancer), nimecheka, nimejichekelea. I’ve also forgiven myself and learnt gentleness with myself. I’ve hugged my shame and why I held it that way and accepted it. I’ve just been so human with myself and that has allowed me to be human with others without feeling like I’m masking. So summary would be, unmasking is a bitch. It is a wild ride, it is like you are unlearning everything. It’s wild.

But I want to learn more. Like if this is what I’ve started with, I want to know what more is there.

I don’t mind death. Ka ni time yangu, ni time yangu, there is not much I can do about it. But, I don’t think death is an end, I think it is just going to exist somewhere else. Somewhere I’ve never existed before, or maybe I just don’t remember being there but it doesn’t feel like an end. So, even if I die today, I don’t feel like I’m gone. I feel like I still have work to do here and I won’t be done just existing in another realm. I don’t know what that will look like but I believe it will be okay. Life is a series of unknowns, so that is just another unknown, which is okay.

(We stay in silence for almost one minute not knowing what to say because we were just thrown into moments of individual crises.)

Baĝbo: I don’t have any more questions and I’m grateful that y’all have been so graceful and patient. That you’ve let me ask these questions and get a glimpse into your lives. That’s amazing and thank you.

Agose: Baĝbo, thanks.
KK: Yeah, thank you for holding the space. It was so lovely sharing.

(We thank all the gods who made this possible and the ancestors who guided our hearts.)

old friends, new friends:
where shall we go?
how shall we evolve?
what shall we leave with?
let us open portals…

***

To commemorate Pride Month 2024, Sanaa kwa Sana and The Bambis collaborate on Uuma fi Uumamtoota, a project that spotlights and celebrates queer and trans artists in Kenya. Uuma fi Uumamtoota is Afaan Oromo for “creator and creation.”