Unmasking the mesmerising tattooed ladies and personalising their living art is short lived.
“
It certainly was a special time spent meeting these wonderfully energetic women - wives, single mothers, grandmothers, good friends, community elders - and listening to their stories, learning about their aspirations ~ Mark
The 500-year old tradition of tattooing young ladies’s faces ceased some 50years ago. This tattooing first rappelled an ancient king’s pleasures for women from the Rhakine region. The markings then transformed into an art of individual beauty before the practice was outlawed by the national government.
Girls were tattooed at a young age - before they were teenagers. Their inked patters - covering cheeks, nose, eyelids. foreheads, upper and lower lips and chin - range from dotted lines, spiderwebs, flowers or rings to fully-blackened faces. The methodology was rudimentarily performed by a trusted specialist from their parent’s native village. They were rolled and tied in rattan mats to constrain movement whilst markings where made using needles and sometimes thorns to impregnate a buffalo bile pigment.
The painful task took a couple of days and lasts a lifetime.
