Dakota Weik

What This Is

The Halls of Ink holds records on over 1,900 tattoo artists across 78 countries, alongside studios, conventions, a rare book library, and a growing archive of indigenous tattooing traditions.

It is one project, built by one person, across a directory, a documentary series, and a foundation.

The Mission

Colonization erased tattoo traditions across much of the world. This work exists to help reverse that, one archive entry, one documentary, and one restored tradition at a time.

The Halls of Ink Foundation directs 15% of every merch sale toward indigenous communities reclaiming their tattoo culture.

The Archive

A directory of the world's tattoo artists, studios, and conventions, built to be searched and explored.

The Great Library

A curated collection of the finest tattoo books and literature. 125+ volumes and growing.

The Hall of Indigenous Traditions

The Hall of Indigenous Traditions documents hand tapped and ancestral tattooing practices from the communities that still carry them.

This is preservation work done in partnership with the people whose traditions are being recorded, not extraction of it.

The Films

Life Beyond Ink is a documentary series where Dakota sits with some of the world's most significant tattoo artists to record their stories on film, before those stories are gone.

The Apprenticeship

Dakota is currently apprenticing under @filouino at Atelier Le Filou in Horb am Neckar, Germany, learning the craft from the inside rather than only documenting it from the outside.