Anuja Patel is a Chicago-based artist and performer that knows she was always destined to create. Coming from an Indian immigrant family the expectations to follow a more traditional path were high. In February 2025 she left her marketing career to pursue a creative life full time. She then travelled to India with her family and was taught to tattoo by a local artist steps away from her family’s home. Her current work presents the mystic, spiritual, and ornate while incorporating motifs from her culture and nature. Her body of work, featuring crisp lines and print like qualities, mostly consists of detailed ink hand-drawings. When she is not drawing or tattooing, she can be found performing drag and burlesque under her pseudonyms King Tikka and Miss Sala. Looking ahead in her art she aims to explore themes of illness, grief, climate change, anti-capitalism, and the existential crisis of being a human in today’s world.