Whang-od

Whang-od Oggay; born February 17, 1917) is a Filipina tattoo artist from Buscalan, Tinglayan, Kalinga, Philippines.
She is believed to be the last mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist) from the Butbut people in Buscalan Kalinga and the oldest tattoo artist in the Philippines. She has been tattooing headhunters and women of the indigenous people of Butbut in Buscalan Kalinga for more than 80 years but the Butbut warriors who used to earn tattoos through protecting villages or killing enemies no longer exist.
She now applies the traditional art form to tourists visiting Buscalan. There were proposals to have her as one of the National Artists of the Philippines or as one of the National Living Treasures due to her status as the last mambabatok. She has been featured in various events and television shows featuring her life and her tattoo works.
She never married and has no children. She has been doing the batok, the traditional hand-tapped tattooing, to headhunters who earned the tattoos by protecting villages or killing enemies.
 Her tattoo ink is composed of the mixture of charcoal and water that will be tapped into the skin through a thorn end of a calamansi or pomelo tree. She was tattooed when she was a teenager. Each of her arms took one day to be finished and her family paid bundles of rice for it. When her tattoo was completed her father killed a pig to celebrate it. This ancient technique of batok that dates back a thousand years before her time is relatively painful compared to other conventional techniques. She uses designs found in nature and basic geometric shapes.
 In 2015, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago urged her colleagues in the Philippine Senate through a resolution that Whang-od should be nominated instead as one of the National Living Treasures (Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan), who are of equal rank to National Artists.




 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whang-od

ALison Lucas