“Getting tattooed when I turned 18 was the first time in my life I felt able to make a conscious decision for my own body.” Starting out by hand-poking India ink with sewing needles onto friends, his process has always been an intimate ritual of collaboration and mutual care. “Being raised as a young woman makes it hard to feel like your body is yours,” he says, noting that he grew up attending an all-girls Catholic school in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the strict dress code demanded a heavily gendered uniform. Though his first tattoo doesn’t hold much significance, the act of it was world-changing for self-taught artist and Somewhere co-founder Mars Hobrecker.