The Rise and Fall of ‘Bob Sick’ — Indonesia’s Tattoo King

I was still in high school the first time I saw Bob Sick. He was on stage, dancing like a man possessed to the band Teknoshit. He was a legend in Yogyakarta—a rising artist, a notorious musician, and a man who was covered, literally covered, in tattoos.

I remember standing there transfixed. I wanted to know more. Who was Bob Sick? How did he get so many tattoos? But most of the stories surrounding Bob Sick seemed more myth than reality. People said he was detained during the 1998 student riots. That his art made him incredibly wealthy. That every travel agent in town once refused to sell him a plane ticket abroad because of how he looked. That he had so many tattoos because Muslim tattoo artists refused to use pig skin to learn the trade—so they used Bob Sick instead.

The only way to find the answers to these questions was to track Bob Sick down. The problem was that, in recent years, he had totally dropped off the radar. A quick Google search turned up posts with titles like "Is Bob Sick Dead?" His friend Iwan Wijono had some answers.

"Last year, he had to go to rehab for drug addiction," Iwan said. "It was supposed to last one full year. He wasn't supposed to come home. But after two months, he was sick of it."

The drug addiction had taken a serious toll on Bob Sick, his friends said.

"His mood drops every time he's alone or he is unable to create art," Iwan said. "So we keep him company to keep him happy."

He's suffered multiple overdoses from a deadly cocktail of meth, heroin, and whatever he could get his hands on at the time. He's nearly died at least three times.

But without these substances, he turns quiet and introverted, his friends said. I was unsure what I would find when I walked up to Bob Sick's house on Jalan Godean, in Yogyakarta. The house was big, and located in a well-maintained, very green housing complex. The garage was converted into an arts storage shed. It was full of art supplies.

Bob Sick was wearing tall black boots that looked too small for his skinny legs. He was sitting in his studio on the second floor of his home. He was smoking, breathing in while he pinched his nose.

"My palate [the roof of the mouth] is gone, so when I smoke, I need to block my nose to keep the smoke from coming back out," he explained.

He was missing most of his teeth. Bob Sick said he was visiting the dentist to get the remaining teeth pulled out so he can wear dentures. He looked weathered, like a man who had lived a hard life. But a few years ago, Bob Sick was at the top of the Indonesian art world, a rising star whose paintings were getting shown in international galleries.

"I bought this house back in 2008 when my art was booming," he said.

His paintings, surreal portraits of mis-proportioned men, were fetching tens of millions of rupiah on the global market. He sold one painting for Rp 150 million ($11,194)—no small fee in Indonesia. During his productive years, Bob Sick produced hundreds of works. But the art didn't hold its value. The collectors moved on and Bob Sick was left with a house full of artwork.

"It always goes in cycles," he said. "Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. It's nothing unusual."

His band, Steak Daging Kacang Ijo, was legendary in Yogyakarta during the mid 90s. He could barely play, and the shows were often a hilarious, ramshackle type of performance art. Local author Puthut EA said the band was "incompetent," but always exciting. Their wild performances were a refreshing show of free expression during a time when Suharto's New Order regime was stifling most creative outlets.

"People were always excited for Steak Daging Kacang Ijo's performances," said Puthut EA. "In all honesty, they don't exactly play music. Sometimes Bob would just read poems while the others arbitrarily strummed their instruments."

In 2012, Bob Sick held his most memorable exhibition. It was timed to coincide with the release of his book Bob Sick, I'm a Living Legend—a hit biography that chronicled his topsy-turvy life. The book covered his time with Taring Padi, the legendary Yogyakarta arts collective that was a vocal critic of former president Suharto. He was detained by the military during the 1998 protests that toppled Suharto and badly beaten. He walked away with a few fractured bones. Other student activists disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Today, he's dismissive of his past, preferring to not talk about his detention.

"I was only captured for a few hours," he said softly.

He looked exhausted. Several times we had to take a break from the interview so he could go lie down and take a short nap. But moments later, he would be awake again.

I asked when he got his first tattoo. Bob Sick said he couldn't remember. It was probably sometime in high school. The only part of his body still tattoo free was his genitals and the soles of his feet.

"Which part hurts the most?" I asked.

"Under the eyes," he said. "The skin there is so thin."

He told me that he came from a wealthy family. His parents wanted him to continue on with the family's business. But Bob Sick refused, choosing to become an artists instead.

"My family challenged me," he said.

"What would you be like if you had chosen the oil industry," his ex-wife Widi asked.

"I never would have met you," he said.

He was quiet and sentimental when Widi was in the room. The two met years ago, when she was helping set up one of his art shows. Today, they are separated, but she still lives at his home and helps with his exhibitions. He's preparing for another gallery show this year, he told me. There were rows of paintings lining the walls of his studio.

"I might display them at next year's exhibition," he said.

I got the sense that Bob Sick's life was a mess of inter-weaving stories—as if he was constantly working on a new chapter of a never-ending book. He's a man who wore his restlessness, his trials and tribulations, on his skin. Whenever he felt bored, Bob Sick would go get another tattoo. But he had so little space, that new tattoos were cover old ones, the ink lines bleeding together into a messy pattern. He told me the art world moves in cycles. Sometimes you're up, and sometime's you're down.

The only question here, is whether Bob Sick is going to be able to get back up again. I, for one, hope so.