The Famous and Oldest tattoo Artist in PH
The Kalinga tattoo artist Whang-Od has been dubbed a living legend, a national treasure, and even once “the badass grandmother we always wanted.”
In the Filipino province of Kalinga, 102-year-old Whang-Od Oggay (also known as Whang-od or Maria Oggay) is working to preserve a long-standing custom. She is the oldest mambabatok, or traditional Kalinga tattoo artist, in the nation. Whang-Od gets up at the crack of dawn every day to prepare the water and pine soot ink he will use to hand-tap tattoos onto visitors from all over the world. Even though many people visit her, getting there is no easy task. Tourists travel 15 hours north of Manila to the mountain community of Buscalan, which is only reachable by foot after traveling through a forest and rice terraces for one mile from the closest dirt road.
Whang-Od uses a few simple tools—a pomelo tree thorn, a foot-long bamboo stick, coal, and water—to paint several tattoos each day. The thorn and bamboo are used to drive the handmade ink deep into the flesh. Permanent motifs, such as lines, simple patterns, tribal prints, and animals, are the outcome. Each connotes several concepts, including power, allure, and fecundity.
According to legend and testimonies conducted by tattoo anthropologist Dr. Lars Krutak, Whang- Od started her profession as a tattoo artist at the age of 16 under the guidance of her father. Whang-Od, the first and only female mambabatok of her day, would travel to distant and nearby villages after being requested by the host community to inscribe the sacred emblems of their ancestors on those who had crossed or were about to cross a life threshold.
“When visitors come from far away,” Whang Od says in the Butbut language, “I will give them the tatak Buscalan, tatak Kalinga for as long as my eyes can see.”
