Over 8,000 turn up for Singapore's first tattoo show
By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 10 January 2009 2039 hrs

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SINGAPORE: Over 8,000 people turned up for the first ever tattoo show held in Singapore this weekend.

Asian tattoo designs are increasingly prominent in Hollywood and pop culture.

Yang Zhuo, tattoo artist, YZ Tattoo, Beijing, said: “A lot of people from the West like Chinese culture and those in the East are attracted to Western cultures. Such cross cultural attraction is only normal."

Tattoos have actually long been a part of Asian culture stretching back thousands of years in China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

For a large part of last century though, a tattoo was seen as a counter culture mark in many Asian cities.

Its popularity in the West in the last two decades has inspired an increasing number of Asian youths to rediscover their tattoo cultures.

Not only are Asian designs increasingly popular, Asian tattoo methods are also being increasingly sought after. Conventional tattoos are done using machines but traditional tattoos from places like Thailand and Borneo are done using rods and nails which some say can be a lot more painful.

A Borneo tattoo is done manually. The ink is hammered into your skin, leaving a design which gets darker over time, unlike conventional tattoos where the colour fades over time.

There's also a long history associated with some of these designs,

Wrist tattoos were believed to stop the soul from escaping the body while dot tattoos between the thumb and index finger used to indicate that one was a headhunter.

Eddie David, tattoo artist, Borneo Ink, said: “For a lot of people, the idea of wanting to get a traditional tattoo is because they have already experienced what a machine tattoo does. So they probably have this feeling of wanting something less precise but more natural."

A more mystical tattoo experience is the Thai Sak Yant performed by a monk.

It is the Thai interpretation of the Buddhist and Hindu scripture and serious practitioners see it not only as body art, but also as a spiritual commitment.

Willie Heng, assistant tattoo artist, Fo Guang, said: “Sak Yant has been passed down for over 2,000 years and Sak Yant is done manually, using the traditional rod to implant all those scriptures on the individual to enhance their needs.”

Simon Scarr, graphic journalist, said: “You can feel it going really deep into your skin. It is very painful but it is worth the extra pain. They look very good and very different. They also have a lot more meaning than going to the tattoo parlour and picking one off the board.”

Some do it for art, some do it for religion, some do it for the pain, some do it for fashion. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear that tattoos go back to the neolithic times in 3300 BC and man's obsession with ink is unlikely to fade over time. - CNA/vm