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Meet Whang-od Oggay, the 103year old Filipino tattoo artist- She Is Believed To Be An Immortal


Some people are just magic and intense: Whang-Od is one of them. She is a legendary Filipina tattoo artist considered to be the last mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist) from the Butbut people in Buscalan Kalinga, and the oldest tattoo artist in the Philippines. She was born 17 February 1917.
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. She lost her boyfriend during the Japanese occupation at the age of 25: she never married and has no children.
She has been tattooing indigenous people of Butbut for more than 80 years. Whang-od now applies the batok (the traditional hand-tapped tattooing) to tourists visiting Buscalan.
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.


According to tradition, her tattooing skills can only be inherited through lineage. Whang-od believes that if someone outside the bloodline starts tattooing, the tattoo will get infected. Due to modern living, the young people of her village are no longer interested in embracing the tattooing work of their elders. Despite that, she trains Grace Palicas, her grandniece, and Ilyang Wigan, another bloodline successor, to continue her tattooing work.


See her pictures below:










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