Seattle Kraken Common Thread AANHPI Puck 2025-26
Artist: Kenji Stoll
About The Design: Artist Statement
If you’ve gotten a tattoo in the last 40 years, gone to a beach, watched a sports game or a concert, chances are you’ve seen some form of these designs out in the wild called ‘modern tribal.’ What many people don’t know is that these designs were pioneered by a Filipino-American punk rock kid in the 1980s named Leo Zulueta. What started as raw expression and artistic exploration soon took the world by storm as the art became insanely popular, covering brand logos, celebrities, and everything in between in the 1990s and early 2000s. Loosely inspired by other types of tribal tattooing, this modern tribal style was embraced by people across different cultural boundaries, and laid a foundation for new styles of tattoo art like blackwork, sacred geometry and cyber sigilism, while also bringing awareness to many types of traditional indigenous tattooing.
What inspires me most about this work, and why I think it’s a great fit for AANHPI Heritage Nights, is that it represents an unrecognized legacy of Asian American art and contributions to our society and culture. It exemplifies a uniquely hyphenated American experience of bridging two cultures and creating something new that is now embraced around the world and carried on by people of all different cultural backgrounds. It’s a blend of past and present, tradition and innovation, and I think whether you love it or hate it, it’s truly timeless.