Canto Cutie - Volume 3

race horse’s international fame,
and seeing Silent Witness win at
international races brought much
joy to HKers during the post 2003
SARS pandemic period. Horse
betting, just like any other other
gambling activities in Hong Kong,
is also shrouded in superstition. I
believe that we thought after such
a period of bad luck with the
pandemic, Silent Witness
represented hope as a cultural
icon.
Stories of superstitious myths
scared me as a child but I also had
a sort of fascination and
unquestioned reverence for the
figures in these myths, an attitude
that continues in my adulthood.
Even though I have moved to
Texas for over a decade, these
superstitions still have some
small power over me and the way
I think. Since early 2020, I’ve
become more and more
interested in the grotesque and
monsters as art subjects in my
personal work. My long time
friend and artistic collaborator,
Nat Power (@natpowertat), began
her apprenticeship as a tattoo
artist in 2019 and has since then
been sharing her various
knowledge about tattooing with
me. Although I’ve never been
interested in getting tattoos and
still am not, I’ve begun to expand
my appreciation for tattoos as art.
Before the Covid pandemic, I
used to visit Nat at the tattoo
parlor she worked at and spent
time with her there, sometimes
listening in on Ray, Nat’s mentor,
coaching her on drawing
methods.
Ray
(@flawless.wallace.tattoos) is the
owner of the tattoo parlor and a
tattoo artist of Indonesian
descent. Nat and her mentor
shared with me the history of
tattooing in different indigenous
cultures around the world. One
time Ray even showed me a dice
game tattoo artists often played
amongst themselves, and told
me the game was probably
brought to America by Chinese
sailors in the 1800s. After
learning this, I started doing
some research on my own and
discovered that tattooing was
also a cultural practice by the
Baiyue peoples, the group of
peoples who some Cantonese
and Vietnamese people are
originally descended from before
they were sinocized by the Han.
As a person with a pretty
traditional Hong Kong
upbringing, I still don’t feel the
urge to get tattoos myself, but I
have begun to incorporate some
of the observations I’ve made
about tattoo graphics into my
own personal paintings.
Growing up in Hong Kong
society, I was often told that only
triad members sported tattoos.
This is why HKers have such
prejudice against people who
have visible tattoos; people with
tattoos were supposed to be
unsavory people affiliated with
gang activities. Today, attitudes
about tattoos have changed in
Hong Kong as more and more
young people just think of it as a
personal choice. Personally
though, I still appreciate the
original intention with which
triad tattooing was performed—
people who acquired triad
tattoos sometimes did it because
they believe having a mythical
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