Pintados 003

The Pintados series is a cultural vignette of the indigenous tattooed people of the Visayan region. Colloquially called the pintados which means "the painted ones" by the Spaniards when they originally landed in the archipelago. This ancient tattooing practice is rarely represented in contemporary art and is often associated with other indigenous peoples' tattooing practices. The tattoo motifs represented in these pieces were referenced from the ethnohistorical document called the Boxer Codex - a manuscript containing illustrations and descriptions of pre-colonial Filipinos and other Asian peoples created around the 1590s. These ink illustrations provide a visual narrative on self-expression through body modification and how these motifs represents culture and identity.