In conversation: Tate and Andrew Mok, the Hong Kong artists better known as Offgod:Tate
The Hong Kong-born, Gen Z brothers talk about collaborating with Adidas, and meeting their heroes Pharrell Williams and Takashi Murakami
Andrew Mok: We’re both into art and drawing, and I learned from you. I decided to start a social media account to post my drawings of YouTubers and musicians because I was a bored kid at school and wanted a creative outlet. I started tagging them, and they started being noticed and shared. I didn’t want to just be a social media artist, so I started more original art, then involved you.
Tate Mok: I was studying architecture [at university], and when I came back for the summer, we thought about how to make your stuff more sculptural, how to manifest it in 3D. Then we made the headphone sculptures.
AM: We were on different sides of the world, working remotely.
TM: The first year and a half we worked that way.
AM: I’d ask you to send something by a certain deadline and it would be a lot of calling you up at night like, “We have to send this in the next few hours.”
TM: Yeah, we didn’t get a lot of sleep [laughs].
AM: Giving each other space to experiment, then sending it back and forth.
TM: That’s still how we work now. We start with an initial idea, then we go, “OK, you cook.” We end up at a point where we’re both happy. That’s usually the best outcome.