Snakeoil tattoo

Snakeoil tattoo conjoins an English idiom for fraudulent remedies with imagery drawn from the Japanese irezumi tradition, in which serpents have long served as protective and dual-natured motifs across body-suit designs. The pairing is characteristic of Kristensen's bilingual wit, in which a Western phrase is grafted onto a thoroughly Japanese visual vocabulary. The flat, graphic register of mokuhanga is well suited to the bold contour lines and saturated fields of irezumi design; the print likely employs sharply cut keyblocks for the linework with successive color blocks for the scales, set against the absorbent surface of [washi](/glossary/washi). [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations along the serpent's body would carry the sense of coiled volume without resorting to Western shading. Within Kristensen's broader practice, which often takes received Japanese forms and inflects them with contemporary or foreign reference, Snakeoil tattoo sits alongside his Tokyo Tower and pop-cultural prints as an exercise in cross-cultural quotation rather than pastiche.