Meet Chloe (xi) Hua

We were lucky to catch up with Chloe (xi) Hua recently and have shared our conversation below.

Chloe (Xi), thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I have always been a kid growing up that was different from everyone else around me. Born and raised in the Chinese community in the early 90s was extremely challenging when it comes to living as my own person and explore my own characteristics as a human being. I have always had pushbacks whenever I wanted to pursue anything as a kid. While everybody was learning math, literature, and physics as their extracurricular subjects, I told my parents that I wanted to pursue art. Everybody said that it was really cute and didn’t think too much about it. Some people took it as an excuse that I wanted to be lazy. Some people thought that I was too mentally challenged to pursue all the other subjects the other kids were put through. This is to say that no one was supportive except for my parents, but at the same time I knew that deep down they didn’t know how to deal with my uniqueness as a child.

Living in an environment where people had a lot of trouble seeing me and acknowledging me somehow helped with developing my resilience; I simply refuse to believe that I was what everybody thought I was, which was nothing but worthless. The more people denied my potentials or simply ignored me altogether, the more I wanted to prove them wrong. So my resilience really initially came from how I wanted to be acknowledged as a valid and valuable human being.

I feel like building resilience will always be a work-in-progress for me. As an artist, I am constantly creating, expressing, as well as growing as a person. As my methodology keeps on changing, it is important for me to understand my core which guides me to return back home whenever I feel lost. This definitely helps me to develop my resiliency.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Simply put, I am a tattoo artist based in Vancouver Canada. Well, I am a lot more than that but let’s just start there!

To me, the way I create tattoos (and my art in general) is about storytelling. The process is as much about the client as it is about myself. To me, everything is a story. I am well aware that calling everything a story might take away the seriousness of what’s been expressed. However, the connotation of a story as a product of fantasy, coming from “childish minds” and certainly “not real” is just a preconceived notion taught to most of us. (This belief that a story shall not be taken seriously is in it of itself a story). At the end of the day, a story really narrates a belief, a feeling that allows a sense of identity to anchor itself in us. This identity can be anything and does not have anything to do with what our human brains can perceive.

When I am creating a tattoo for you in the moment, I am essentially a close listener to your story. I pay attention to how you put your words together; how you breathe; how you carry yourself while telling me your story; as well as the underlying whispers of words that aren’t being spoken. As I soak in your story, the words and vibrations react with my stories, my existence, and my vibrations on a biological, chemical, and spiritual level. As the reaction takes place, a new form of presentation of your story is given back to you on your skin as a form of a tattoo. This process is very much like how rain is form: heat evaporates the water on earth. Then, the steam rises to sky, clinging to dusts in the air. Little water droplets form and clouds are created. As clouds continue to form, the water will be rained back down to earth. However, if looked at on a microscopic level, the water that sent back to earth is not exactly the same as the water that was initially on earth prior to evaporation.

Each tattoo of mine is an encapsulated moment in time where you and your story cling to the participles of my existence, and rain back down to your skin. It captures the truest form of you through the truest form of me in a very special moment in time, which would be the present moment the tattoo is created.

Instead of looking at a tattoo as a permanent piece, I’d rather look at a tattoo as a special mark left by history which will stay with us during the entire time we operate out of this physical vessel. This mark shows that we felt and identified with something so strongly with such conviction at one point in history when looking back.

Through my art, I want to see, validate, celebrate people as they are regardless of how their journeys might twist and turn in the future. I live for all that has brought us together. Here. And. Now.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

On my journey, one of the most important qualities that allowed me to be here today would be faith/trust. I have always been a very spiritual and stubborn person (lol). Even though growing up I was always told that I cannot make my dream come true as a full-time artist, my intuition told me that I was placed on this earth just to become an embodiment of the “impossible”. I held down to the faith really tightly as I moved through my journey. I treated every single challenge as opportunity for me to equipped myself with the necessary skills, techniques, and knowledge to eventually achieve my dream. In a way, every hater and naysayer was there to help bring attention to me that I need to develop a certain skill in order to move forward. Most importantly, they are there to remind me to root deeper in my vision and my dream. As hard as it is to move through the negativities from people, each time I successfully came out the other end really helped me reinforce my resiliency.

The second most important element that helped me on my journey was knowing what truly matters to me beyond the façade or technical side of my service. At the end of the day, I am really here to be a listener to people’s stories. To put it in a more simple term, I am here to really see and acknowledge people for who they really are. The form of tattooing in a way is a mean to an end for me to achieve my goal as a listener and storyteller. Knowing what ultimately matters the most to me helps me stay grounded when my brain tries to distract me with issues that are unnecessarily aligned with my vision.

The last important component that really helps me on my journey is patience. Needless to say that anything ever worth having in life takes time. I have really committed my entire life to following my calling and I refuse to compromise my vision in anyway. I understand that in order to realize my vision, I will need to go through a series of challenges that can actually lead me to my destination. By having my eyes on the prize, I know it’s just a matter of time before I reached my goal. And the duration of time needed can be blinding and discouraging. I mean… life won’t send us an email counting down the days to the moment when we can say that we have succeeded! So having patience along with faith will keep myself from giving up.

One piece of advice I will give anyone who is early on their journey is that they have to make sure that they know why they’re on this journey. How important somebody’s why is will determine the amount of willpower and determination they have access to early on on this journey. I believe that the most powerful reasons for anybody to be on a specific journey are the ones found within themselves as opposed to coming from an external factor, for example, fame or money.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a challenge, I acknowledge that practising detachment is definitely something that needs strengthening. A lot of times when we put a lot of our energy and sense of identification into a dream or vision we are building, we tend to identify our self-worth with it. By identifying ourselves with our creations, we are risking losing ourselves and becoming too rigid which can paralyze us. It is important to understand that, even though I have dedicated my entire life into this artist dream, I am not just an artist; I am not my art; I am not even my dreams. These are all things that matter to me but they do not identify me. So it is extremely important for me to practice detachment on a daily basis so that I do not lose myself in the process of achieving a life I want. It is an extremely fine line to walk, but it is also extremely important to my sustainability as an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.inkedbychloe.com
• Instagram: @inkedbychloe
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@studio_xi_journey?si=01CXcNHjcVhwrv4Y

Image Credits

Photos of people and the space are by @jo.and.glo on IG