There was a lot of flesh on display at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on Friday for the first day of the city’s tattoo convention, most of it covered in ink.
Established in 2013, the three-day Hong Kong China International Tattoo Exhibition returned to the city after a four-year hiatus because of the protests in 2019, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Set against a soundtrack of thumping electronic music and the persistent buzz of tattoo machines, more than 160 artists from across the globe set to work making a permanent mark on the skin of ink enthusiasts.
The booths that drew the biggest crowds on Friday afternoon were those with human billboards outside them; near-naked men showcasing the intricate work of the artists who had adorned almost every inch of their skin. A queue also formed in front of the bench belonging to Malaysian artist Kinki Ryusaki, whose almost half a million Instagram followers identify her as one of the best-known at the convention.
People gathered, too, to watch Sousyu Hayashi administer ink into a man’s thigh with a hand-held wooden tool known as a terebori, a traditional Japanese tattooing method. Grimaces graced the faces of onlookers, but the person on the receiving end looked rather relaxed, scrolling through his phone as he lay on the ground.
The convention’s founder, Gabe Shum, who also established one of Hong Kong’s most respected tattoo shops, Freedom Tattoo, told HKFP he was happy to be back, and also happy to be hosting the first ever tattoo event at the government-backed exhibition centre.
Previously, the event was held at Innocentre in Kowloon Tong, and the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, but Shum said he liked to change venues to avoid things getting “boring.”
Shum started tattooing when he was 19 and has inked the likes of sports stars David Beckham and Lebron James. Now 60, he said the industry had changed a lot since he began. With the internet, the barrier to entry has all but been removed, something Shum described as a double-edged sword, particularly given Hong Kong’s complete lack of industry regulation.
“These days, a lot of this generation, they don’t care… they’re making a lot of money, they just learn from the computer. They just buy a rotary machine and do it themselves, that’s why a lot of people get bad experiences,” Shum said.
“One of the [reasons] I run this convention is I wanted to encourage and let all this new generation know what a professional artist should be… to teach them to be polite, to be professional artists.”
Hong Kong-based artist Elyse Leaf, a fine art graduate who has been tattooing for about four years under the name Einu, told HKFP she had bought a booth at the convention to raise her profile. There was a lot of competition, because “anybody can buy a machine and call themselves a tattoo artist,” and it was becoming more difficult to stand out on Instagram.
Unlike many well-established artists, whose books were full ahead of the event, Leaf was accepting walk-ins, and had already done two tattoos in her signature whimsical style.
The convention is popular not only with aficionados, but those who hope to get smaller, ready-to-ink “flash” tattoos at a lower price than they would expect to pay in a studio.
As for Shum, he said he had a space saved on his left calf for work by Japanese artist Sabado. “I really, really like his work,” he said. “But today, no, very busy, maybe tomorrow.”
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