Tattoo chic

Once tattooing was just for outsiders, the pian yuan jen (邊緣人) of Taiwan. But from a tiny parlor overlooking the ready-to-wear chicness of Hsimenting's trendy shops, tattoo artist Damau (大毛) has witnessed a change.

He has seen singers and models, even businessmen and civil servants, show them off without fear of stigma -- a sign that tattooing is slowly becoming a mainstream fashion trend in Taiwan. "Like custard tarts and Hello Kitty, tattoos are now in," says Damau, one of a growing group of respected tattooists and body painters now operating in Hsimenting, Taipei, where Japanese fashion copycats or Harizu (哈日族) and the baggy rap jean crowd shop and hang out all week long.

Hsimenting has become a locus for body painting and a new esthetic for tattoos is steadily growing, which fuses Western, traditional Chinese and Japanese designs. Nourished by colorful images served up by the media and dreams of being like Shaq or Cher, or pop stars like Shino (林曉培) or Alex To (杜德偉), young people are rebelling against the conservative attitudes of their parents and paying for dragons that snake around their arms, butterflies that dance up their backs and more extreme designs, in more private places.

Damau, 32, is the man who will do it. At present, though, he's making some of his customers wait. He's too busy carving a dragon into a young man's right arm, talking on two phones, doing this interview, asking a TV crew to wait outside and taking snapshots of his work. Everything is clean, ordered and efficient in his fourth-floor business and Damau talks quickly -- he hasn't got much time; he has another arm to mark for life in 30 minutes.

ART, NOT FASHION

Unlike most tattooists, Damau doesn't use a transfer to trace the design or picture on the skin, before the drill, with its fresh needle full of ink, starts mechanically tearing at the skin. "Tattooing is an art; it's just different materials. I think skin is special," he says as he works. "People come to my shop and ask my opinion about what they want. Then I do the painting, direct on the skin [without transfer], so I don't lose the spirituality of the drawing. A tattoo is a living thing."

Damau, who started his shop eight years ago, does illustrations for textbooks and magazines, but he won't do fashion shows, only news programs. "I get a lot of invitations for entertainment shows, but I don't do them because I don't want teenagers to think that tattooing is just a fashion," he says.

Damau is serious about his work and keen to change perceptions of his trade.

"Gangsters? I only do real gangsters. People with tattoos aren't bad; people who don't have tattoos often are, just look at the politicians and policemen."

Damau may be an artist who claims not to like the fashion business, but the facts are it is paying well. Though tattooing is not mainstream, yet, it is becoming big business. It costs around NT$2,000 for a 7cm design on the arm that takes roughly half an hour. A shoulder will cost NT$10,000 and upward, depending on the design and coloring. A good tattooist can make-over about 20 people a day.

Although there are no official figures, since tattooing is not licensed and because many tattooists are part time and one-man band operations working privately, estimates suggest there may be around 300 working tattooists in Taiwan today. This is up from the five shops that were around five years ago.