With more than 30 million tourists a year, the resurrection of the sacred tattoo sak yant tradition, changing life-styles and development in Thailand, the number of tattoo shops in the kingdom has exploded. But the country’s capital Bangkok has not hosted a tattoo convention in years. This year the City of Angels has returned to form. Welcome to the Thailand Tattoo Expo 2017, held for two days at the Suan Lum Night Market in late March.
Text : Laure Siegel Photos : Tom Vater
Two girls in mini-skirts, each balancing on one leg, form a perfect Y shape around two naked men, whose freshly inked backs shine under the flashes of the photographers. Above them, a large Hell's Angels banner welcomes visi-tors to the convention, organized by the Thailand Tattoo Association (TTA). Welcme to Thailand! Founded in 2015, the organization has 600 members and aims to bring together the country’s tattooists. "This group was originally created to organize workshops on sanitary standards and techniques," explains Oli, spokesman for the TTA. "There are a lot of small conventions in Thailand, on Koh Samui, Phuket and in Chiang Mai, so we wanted to do something in Bangkok, especially with the local and regional markets in mind, which have grown tremendously over the last five years." Indeed, apart from several international tattoo artists, hardly any foreigners, whether tourists or expatriates, are to be seen in the aisles between the booths and the event is definitely a rendezvous for the rebellious youth of Bangkok for the weekend.
We meet Ying, president of the TTA, at the bar, run by the Bangkok branch of the Hell's Angels. Owner of Youngterk Tattoo Studio, he is himself a Hell's, decked out in tattoos, dark sunglasses, hand-painted shoes, wearing his club’s colors on his back. "In Thailand, the Hell's are simply a motorcycle association and not a criminal enterprise," he says. The Hell’s Angels have been in the news lately because of a battle for its control between of bloody clashes between Thai and Australian members in the infamous beach town of Pattaya. Ying is not a newcomer to the convention game. From 2004 to 2015, he held one-day tattooo contests at a shopping mall. In 2010, a convention in Bangkok did take place floundered for lack of sponsorship. Today, Ying wants to estab-lish the Thailand Tattoo Expo in the annual convention calendar. "We want to organize a similar event every year. Next year, we will try to find a bigger venue, to be able to add fifty stands. »
Half of the 250 artists present are Thai. All their booths sport a golden-framed portrait of King Bhumibol Aduldayej, who died in October 2016. One way to pay tribute to the beloved sovereign is to get the king’s portrait or the number 9 (in Tha)i tattooed, because his official title was Rama IX.
Artists from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea and Taiwan also made the trip. And perhaps for the first time in the history of contemporary tattooing, Burmese tattooists, whose country has recently awakened after decades of terror and dictatorship, are represented internationally. Zarni (Rebel Tattoo House) has just finished a piece on a thigh: the slogan Food Not Bombs originated with an international collective that emerged in the 1980s in Boston. The groups affiliated to this network collect foodstuffs intended to be thrown away and redistribute it to the needy. With his punk band The Rebel Riot, Zarni distributes food to the poor in Yangon, Burma's economic capital, every Wednesday night. "We adhere to the values of punk and everything we do, from music to tattoos, is a way of helping others and spreading values of solidarity, tolerance and critical thinking. »
Andreas Majakil ( studio, Kota Kinabalu) from Borneo is in the middle of a discussion with Oetjha Pangaribuan (Bucks Buks Tattoo Studio, Jakarta), one of the founders of the Indonesian Subculture group, an art collective: "I learned a lot with them. These sort of events allow us to exchange our experiences and to gradually create an Asian underground community ". And while he’s at it, Andreas also takes the opportunity to acquire the video tutorials of Boristattoo (Vien-na). With a dozen other sponsored artists including Shigenori Iwasaki (Yellow Blaze), Randy Engelhard, Julian Siebert, Klaus Hu Fruhmann, Jessi Manchester, Matt Curzon Tattoo, KT Miyagi and Washun Lastgate, the Hungarian-born Boris participates in the Cheyenne Asia Tour
Caro, who tattoos in private studio in Béziers, France, is a regular visitor of Thailand and loves the islands of the south. "Every time I come back from Koh Phangan, I'm brimming with ideas and creativity." She is here with Jo Hell (Blood for Blood), Yo (Graphic Addiction) and David (David Mastok Tattoo). "There are animals and children everywhere, it's a joyful chaos but the quality of the tattoos is great and we got a great welcome. »
On stage, Picky animates the contests. A tattoo artist in Bangkok for twenty years (Law Birdy Tattoo), she created the magazine Siam Tattoo in 2012: "I sent pictures of my pieces to a magazine and they refused to publish them, proba-bly because I was a girl. That made me angry. They did not take me seriously so went off and created my own maga-zine!" Her publication Siam Tattoo is published annually.
The Thailand Tattoo Expo attracted some 6,000 people over two days. Ying is satisfied: "With the little promotion we've had, it's not that bad, even if it's still hard to get the mainstream media interested in this kind of events. But it's going to change in a generation. When my children become adults, I think the tattoo will be seen as completely normal, be-cause their parents are tattooed. " The second Bangkok Tattoo Expo will take place at BCC Hall, CentralPlaza from March 23rd to March 25th 2018.
