Back in March, right after getting vaccinated, I finally booked a tattoo appointment with Jenna Bouma (@Slowerblack), a Brooklyn-based stick-and-poke artist I've long admired. I reasoned that getting stabbed thousands of times with a tiny needle would be a perfectly acceptable antidote to the cloudy stupor of the past year. Why put it off any longer?
When I finally met Bouma a few weeks later in downtown Brooklyn, she turned out to be a free spirit with a taste for wanderlust—which made for easy conversation. For three hours we talked about everything from Japanese hardcore bands to dabbling in ceramics to international locales that we've been fortunate enough to visit. The tattoo (a bulldog on my belly) came out sick. But it was the conversation that jolted my smooth brain back to life. Talking to her about her travels for work made me want to immediately book a tattoo trip to some dreamy far-off destination—Oaxaca, Taipei, Rome—in hopes of adding to the collection.
In that spirit, we tapped staffers from international GQs scattered around the world for some intel on local artists: Who are the folks doing some of the coolest, most imaginative ink work in your corner of the map? Here's what we were able to turn up.
Josh Lin
Location: Taipei
Book him if you want: big, ornate art pieces that blend photorealism with surreal dreamscapes. Lin, who majored in fine arts in college, is the guy that all the Taiwanese chart-toppers (like E.SO, ØZI, and OSN) hit up when they need to get work done.
But be prepared to: get wait-listed for up to three years. That wait will be worth it: Once you're in, you're part of an exclusive club. “Most of my clients have been with me for a very long time,” says Lin. “When they're heartbroken, they want a tattoo. When they're celebrating something, they also want a tattoo. I have walked with them through all stages of life, from the passing of relatives, to breakups and makeups. I see myself as the supporting role in their stories.”
Chaim Machlev
Location: Berlin and L.A.
Book him if you want: beautiful, minimalistic, geometric lines that flow organically on an individual's body—and, as in the case of clients like Machine Gun Kelly, pieces that look just as gorgeous drawn over existing tattoos.
Be prepared to: arrive with an open mind and a willingness to collaborate. “I never do sketches prior to the appointment as no one has the same body and I need to observe how the person moves,” says Machlev. “It's all about the ceremony of connecting and designing that makes it work.”
Francesco Ferrara
Location: Rome
Book him if you want: timeless tattoos that will look good forever. Think old-school Sailor Jerry-style flash pieces—traditional snakes, skulls, Christ on the cross—but with extra bold lines and a heavy color palette. “I take a lot of inspiration from the ‘fathers’ of traditional tattooing, such as Bert Grimm, Amund Dietzel, Owen Jensen, and many others,” says Ferrara.
Be prepared to: spend a few solid hours in the chair. These are pieces that require a lot of ink but will only get better with age: “The most important thing for me is that my tattoos remain legible on the skin over time.”
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Thomas Bennington
Location: Montreal
Book him if you want: neoclassical black-and-white tattoos like daggers, skulls, and grim reapers—but with a sense of humor. (His grim reapers have been shown to walk dogs or kick back with margaritas.) “My work is easy to pair with other pieces,” says Bennington. “You can build a patchwork with most of my stuff.”
Be prepared for: a piece that's one-of-a-kind, both three-dimensional and dreamy, and shaped by Bennington's vivid imagination. “When I was first getting started, I was just trying to tattoo the way I draw,” he says of his style. “I’ve never been one to use a lot of lines. It’s more realistic drawings—the lines kind of got incorporated later just for fun. I like to be able to tattoo the way I draw with a lead pencil.”
Dr. Lakra
Location: Oaxaca
Book him if you want: a piece that's truly demented. We're talking scorpions with skulls for heads, fire-breathing toads, and other psychedelic monsters out of a Boschian fever dream. It's a small wonder Dr. Lakra is maybe the most in-demand tattoo artist in Mexico.
Be prepared to: submit to the process and let the good doctor's imagination run wild. “My style is no style,” he says. “I just jump from one place to another.”
Horinao
Location: Tokyo
Book him if you want: an extremely technical take on traditional Japanese wabori tropes—sakura blossoms, koi fish, a demonic oni mask—but with playful modern twists.
Be prepared to: give up some prime real estate on your body, as these pieces are usually large and have multiple elements going on. “If I'm working on a half-sleeve, I usually incorporate swirls, wind, clouds, rocks, and waves in the background,” says Horinao. “The focal point is the key artwork, but I'm always thinking about how to smoothly intertwine the subject with the intricate background.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the November 2021 issue with the title "Destination Ink."
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PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs for Josh Lin by Manbo Key & Chien-Wen Lin
Photographs for Chaim Machlev by Ronald Dick
Photographs for Francesco Ferrara by Sara Pellegrino
Photographs for Thomas Bennington by François Ollivier
Photographs for Dr. Lakra by Jesús Montealegre
Photographs for Horinao by Jiro Konami
