Dr Lakra

Jerónimo López Ramirez, more commonly known by his moniker Dr Lakra, was born in Mexico in 1972. Lakra is the eldest son of the anthropologist and poet Elisa Ramírez Castañeda and the painter Francisco Toledo. Lakra followed in his father’s footsteps by studying under famous Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco before eventually moving into the area of tattooing.

Dr Lakra later moved away from tattooing to pursue his interest in painting, citing the ‘McDonalds’ nature of pumping out tattoo designs as his reason for changing career paths.

Dr Lakra rose to prominence in the 1990s as a tattooist, and has since gained an international following for his alteration and appropriation of 1940s and 1950s magazine covers, pin-ups, wrestling posters and medical lithographs – paving the way for artists such as Belgian practitioner Jean-Luc Moerman and Spanish selfproclaimed ‘dandy delinquent’ Ramon Maiden.

These works fully exploit Dr Lakra’s talents as a supremely skilled draughtsman and transform those depicted from clean-skinned, ‘pure’ figures of community adoration, to ‘grotesque’ and marginalised embodiments of the tattoo subculture. Covered from head to toe in Dr Lakra’s drawings of recognisable tattoo icons – such as bats, spiders, Chicano, Maori, Thai, and Philippine cultural markings, snakes, skulls, crosses, the devil, the Virgin Mary, and roses – the figures are covered in what amounts to a form of human graffiti, undermining the air of innocence that was so readily portrayed through the media of the era.

Simultaneously playful and provocative (both politically and sexually), it comes as no surprise that Dr Lakra relishes the opportunity to subvert such sanitised images, with his namesake Lakra roughly translating from a Spanish colloquialism meaning ‘delinquent’. His penchant for carrying his tattoo equipment in a black bag would also see the term ‘Dr’ become part of his artist moniker. Ergo, ‘Dr Delinquent’ was born. Lakra can also, fittingly in the context of his work and the way in which sections of society may view those he depicts, mean ‘scar’ or ‘scum’.

He quickly became one of the most sought after tattoo artists in Mexico, however the popularity of his tattoos would eventually lead him back to painting. And while he seldom tattoos anymore, save for the occasional firing up of his machine in his Oaxaca home studio, his practice remains invariably marked by his interest in the medium.