Meet Whang-Od, the Oldest Tattoo Artist in the Philippines

102-Year-Old Tattooist Is Keeping an Ancient Philippine Tattoo Tradition Alive

By Sara Barnes on August 9, 2019

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A post shared by La Blouse Roumaine (@lablouseroumaine) on Sep 4, 2018 at 2:21pm PDT

At 102 years old, Whang-Od Oggay (who also goes by Whang-od or Maria Oggay) is helping to keep an ancient tradition alive in the Kalinga province of the Philippines. She’s the country’s oldest mambabatok, a traditional Kalinga tattooist. Each morning at dawn, Whang-Od wakes to craft a mixture of ink from pine soot and water in preparation to apply hand-tapped tattoos on the bodies of people from around the world. Although many come to see her, their journey is no small feat. Visitors make a 15-hour drive north of Manila to the mountain village of Buscalan, which is only accessible by hiking a mile from the nearest dirt road through a forest and rice terraces.

Whang-Od inks multiple tattoos a day using a few tools—a thorn from a pomelo tree, a foot-long bamboo stick, coal, and water. The handmade ink is tapped deep into the skin using the thorn and bamboo to push it in. The results are permanent motifs that range from lines to simple shapes to tribal prints to animals. Each carries meanings such as strength, beauty, and fertility.

The hand-tapped body art began with the indigenous Butbut warriors. For these men, the addition of tattoos had a very specific meaning; they could only be inked after killing someone. On women, however, body art fell within standards of beauty. Whang-Od recalls that during her youth, her friends covered her arms and legs in tattoos. It's also when she started to learn how to apply them to others. At age 15, under the guidance of her father, she started her tattoo apprenticeship. It represented a break in the practice as men were the only ones allowed to learn how to tattoo.

Keeping the mambabatok tradition alive is more challenging than you might think. The culture believes that this art can only be passed down to blood relatives. Otherwise, the tattoos will become infected. Whang-Od has no children of her own, but she’s not afraid of the art dying out. She's trained her grandnieces to become tattoo masters of their own.