Dak Pak: Vacation Forever

Dak Pak’s father used to check his backpack for cans of spray paint every day. Once his father was satisfied that there was nothing to find, he let the budding rebellious teenager go on his way. But the then thirteen-year-old Dak Pak would then scurry over to a nearby abandoned building where he stashed his cans and black book and go out and tag anyways.

“I wanted to influence people in my neighborhood, my city,” he said of why he started tagging. “I really wanted to express myself. From the first time I did graffiti, I knew I wanted to do it for my whole life.” There was a Bohemian draw to the lifestyle he saw in the tattoo and graffiti magazines he had in his bedroom. “The writers I hung out with had long hair, smoked cigarettes, and wore low pants,” he said. “It looked like freedom.” His original tag was Dacro Pacman—Dacro a misspelling of Draco, that itself was a derivative of Dracula, which he thought sounded cool. But the letter K was more fun to write than C, so the tag Dak Pak was born.

“From the first time I did graffiti, I knew I wanted to do it for my whole life.”

Nowadays, Chiapas-born graffiti writer and tattoo artist makes his home in the resort town of Playa del Carmen. He travels the world tagging from Budapest to Pittsburgh, and his lifestyle of doing murals, live painting, and tattooing has him on a sort of permanent vacation. “It’s always shorts, sandals, a t-shirt. People enjoy life. And the tourists in Playa del Carmen are good for being an artist,” he explained. “It’s good to be around happy people.”

I spoke to Dak Pak while he was in an artist and tattooing residency in Pittsburgh, his first time in the United States. He had just finished tattooing a client—a local chef and fellow graffiti writer. As we bantered in a combination of Spanish and English, he wiped off the tools in the space he was sharing with tattoo artist Eryn Oberst. It’s easy to see how Dak Pak makes a good tattoo artist, with his unflappable, cheerful energy. Dak Pak has an infectious sort of chill attitude to him. It’s hard, around him, not to feel like you also are on a permanent vacation.

But his relaxed demeanor and focus on personal freedom doesn’t mean his work is any less serious or complex.  His murals draw from Aztec and Maya imagery, but also from ancient Japanese demons and monsters. He’s interested in the commonalities between ancient cultures. “Thailand, Japan, and China have a lot of similarity to Maya culture. I like to mix the cultures together,” he said. “I like to learn the history of places as I learn the present.”

His father eventually came around to his lifestyle, partially because Dak Pak discovered street art as a middle ground between illegal tagging and fine arts. He encourages young writers to know the difference between graffiti and murals, but also to realize that murals are a way you can make a living without sacrificing what you love about graffiti. “Murals do come from a different context than graffiti,” he said. “There are muralists who are not graffiti writers, there’s a different history, but it’s hard to separate them,” he said. “Sometimes young people who are starting out think they can’t do murals. It’s important to tell people just starting out that even though there’s a difference, we are all siblings. They come from the same idea.”

“I like to learn the history of places as I learn the present.”

Murals have afforded Dak Pak the opportunity to travel the world. The bright colors and spiritual undertones in what Dak Pak paints attracted a new audience for his work: Music festivals. He was invited to do live painting at the Ozora Festival in Hungary, one of the biggest psychedelic music festivals in the world.

“I’ve been going to raves for seventeen years, and psychedelic trance really influenced me,” he said. “My mind was opened to seeing different symbols.” A number of music festivals in the south of Mexico have also asked him to live paint there. In Pittsburgh, he completed two group murals as part of his residency and sold prints in a graffiti scene takeover of Mixtape, a local nightclub. He said he found Pittsburgh to be “a little bit European,” and that the graffiti scene didn’t have a lot of beefs in it because of its small, tight-knit nature.

“My favorite place to paint was in Berlin, in Teufelsberg,” he told me of his travels. “I think Berlin is probably the capital of graffiti for both America and Europe, because both European and American writers meet there.” (Also, for someone who likes to party, Berlin is pretty unbeatable). Wherever he goes, he likes to push himself to try new things, whether larger scales, more complicated designs, or more community outreach. “I wanted to come to the United States because the movement started here,” he said. “I always feel like I have the opportunity to learn from people in the places I go.”

“Sometimes young people who are starting out, think they can’t do murals. It’s important to tell people just starting out, that even though there’s a difference, we are all siblings. They come from the same idea.”

Dak Pak has spent the summer in New York, Montréal, and even a side trip to Cincinnati to see cousins he hasn’t gotten to speak to in twenty-five years. Graffiti, tattooing, and raves are three scenes that make sure that wherever you go, you can find your people. There’s an exchange of creativity and a shared sense of being on the margins. He first got interested in graffiti from seeing writers in his neighborhood in Chiapas, and hopes that in the places he goes, he can be that inspiration for someone else, too. “Graffiti has many arms to it, but what ties it all together is that it’s all in the street, it’s all for the public,” he said.

His goal is to paint in all seven continents—though Antarctica might be a little challenging. But with Dak Pak’s current track record, I wouldn’t be surprised to find his tag on the wall of a research station at the bottom of the globe.