Cartographies of Skin & Soil: Philippine Tattoos, Resistance & Colonial Maps

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Center for Philippine Studies and the Philippine Collection at Hamilton Library, the Cartographies of Skin and Soil: Tattoos, Resistance, and 1500s Philippine Colonial Maps exhibit was launched from Oct. 15 to 17 with a workshop series and traditional tattoo sessions. The exhibit will remain on display in Hamilton’s Asia Collection Reading Room through February 2026.

The events at Hamilton Library drew more than 100 participants, who explored how Filipinos have long marked memory and resisted erasure through traditional tattoos, archival materials—including letters in classical Ilokano from the Philippine Revolution, underground papers from the Marcos Regime—and rare, original 1500s Philippine maps. These materials, preserved in the library’s Philippine Collection, highlight the ways cultural memory endures through both paper and skin.

Philippine Studies Librarian Elena Clariza began the workshops with a talk focusing on Philippine Colonial Maps from the 1500s–1700s, connecting fragile maps on paper with living maps of the body—tattoos as archives of ancestral knowledge and cultural memory. Read Clariza’s reflection on the event in the sidebar and view the map collection here.

Guest speakers and cultural tattooists Elle Festin, Zel Festin, Kristine Angeles and Ronna Ventigan from California’s Spiritual Journey Tattoo Shop, along with Tatak ng Apat na Alon (Mark of the Four Waves) members Cypress Bautista, Katrin Gabriel-Bloom, Margaret Nazareno, Paul Baretto, Dion Montero, Rob Daluson and James LaPierre, delivered a presentation on Filipino tattoo traditions and offered live hand poke and tapping tattoo demonstrations. Three of Hamilton Library’s student assistants—King James Mangoba, Sam Stone, and Sara Belarmino—participated in the tattoo workshop.

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Embarking on a Spiritual Journey

Tatak ng Apat na Alon is a pioneering Filipino cultural organization dedicated to reviving traditional tattoo practices, and Spiritual Journey is its official tattoo shop. Their artists use a range of techniques—including hand poke, tapping and machine tattooing—grounded in ancestral knowledge. The group has been featured in Kalinga Tattoo: Ancient and Modern Expressions of the Tribal.

Elle Festin is a tattoo artist at Spiritual Journey and a chief, or Datu, of the Mark of the Four Waves tribe. He said, “What’s unique about Philippine tattooing style and equipment is that they have several ways to apply the ink.” 

In addition to hand poke and tapping, he said there’s a method of cutting the skin and rubbing soot into the cut. He said there are tools traditional artists use—like the S tool pictured below—that are not found elsewhere in the Pacific.

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Festin said the organization began revitalizing Filipino tattooing techniques nearly 30 years ago: “In the beginning it was just for us to find our identity, to represent the culture in some way,” he said. 

He credits his mentors, Polynesian tattoo artists Poʻoino and Aisea Toetuʻu, with guiding him and early members of the tribe in researching their cultural heritage. Since then, the tattoos have grown profoundly deeper in meaning and representation for their practitioners and recipients. Festin said, “It’s important to get the tattoos to show the resistance and to revolt against the systematic colonial mentality.”

During pre-colonial times, nearly all ethnic groups of the Philippines practiced tattooing, and the practice spanned gender and class. Many of these traditions were lost during the Spanish colonial era, when a mass conversion to Christianity was underway. Today, the traditional practices are endangered, and Tatak ng Apat na Alon is hoping to revive them.

Festin said Filipino cultural taboos against tattooing still exist, but he hopes they will fade as more people understand their deep cultural significance. 

“I think they just have to realize that we have poetry on our skin,” he said, and his organization is working to educate people about what the tattoos mean. “That’s why we’re doing that mission, being Four Waves. That’s why we’re here now and we’re trying to tell your audience and tell your peers to take a step forward and get tattooed.”

King James Mangoba, Hamilton Library’s social media content creator and double major in communication and marketing at UH Mānoa, did just that as a participant in the tattoo demonstrations – see a video he made about the event here. He now proudly sports an arm band that features a combination of patterns representing rice and ancestor spirits that are meaningful to him. 

“The rice symbolizes my family’s livelihood of rice farming back in the Philippines. The ancestor spirit represents my deep appreciation to my ancestors, who I feel are always guiding me in life,” Mangoba said. “This tattoo is a permanent reminder of where I came from and my appreciation to my ancestors who came before me.”

Ancestral connections, cultural pride 

 Connecting with their ancestors, reclaiming their Filipino identity, and telling their life stories are primary themes for those who have chosen to be tattooed, and Spiritual Journey helps its clients do this in purposeful ways.

“When I contacted Spiritual Journey, it was wonderful because they had asked me some questions and they helped me with the background, so then that was my journey,” said Tatak ng Apat na Alon member Cypress Bautista. “And part of that was reclaiming my identity as a Filipino.”

Bautista was born in Pampanga and came to the U.S. when she was 2. She said she lived in a predominately white neighborhood growing up, and that she felt it was important to be silent and invisible to fit in and assimilate. She regretted not learning the Tagalog and Kapampangan languages spoken in her home. So as an adult, she has been trying to reconnect with her heritage. Her tattoo was an important part of that journey.

“It helped me to connect with my ancestors and was a reminder that colonization really hurt—not only our land and our people, but our own body sovereignty. And so that was one step to reclaim that,” Bautista said.

She said her tattoo took multiple sessions, and the process was a deeply moving experience.

“Each time, I felt my ancestors were with me. And that they were whispering, ‘Endure this. It will be worth it.’ And 100 percent, it was. Now that I have the tattoos, it does feel like an armor. I wear them unapologetically.”

That same spirit of pride and connection carried into her participation as a guest speaker at the Cartographies of Skin and Soil presentations, where she reflected on the broader meaning of cultural reclamation and community healing. 

“I carry deep gratitude for the opportunity to serve our community, our culture, and especially the youth. This experience was a healing balm and a powerful reminder that our shared teachings and stories, however incremental, create meaningful progress toward the reclamation of our Filipino identities,” Bautista said. “I was deeply blessed by the connections formed and will always treasure this experience.”

Katrin Gabriel-Bloom, a member of the tribe who is of Ilokano and Cebuano descent, was born in Manila and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She said she felt a disconnect to her Filipino heritage as she was growing up, and she wanted to dig deeper as the years went by to find a more spiritual connection with her culture and to honor her ancestry. She found that understanding with Spiritual Journey in the process of getting her tattoo.

“I feel grounded and connected, to my own body, to my spirituality, to my ancestors,” she said. “A lot of the tattoo markings that I wear remind me of my grandparents, my parents, and everyone else that came before me.”

She said they help her know she is never alone. One tattoo she especially loves is a crab motif that represents being a traveler. 

“For me, having that tattoo really shows how to create your own identity in the diaspora. So the legs, traveling everywhere, going far, but on their back is always origins of being at home—wherever you go in this world,” Gabriel-Bloom said. 

“I’m always on this journey with my family that have paved the way. And in this lifetime, in my life, I find it as a way to make my own story and my own journey,” she said. “It’s a combination of my past, my present, and getting to share that in the future as well.”

A family making its mark 

Rob Daluson was born in Hawai‘i and grew up in Ewa Villages, until his family moved to the LA area when he was around 12. He said his grandparents had migrated to Hawai‘i from the Philippines to work in the sugar plantations in Ewa. He remembers his family encouraging him to assimilate.

“They didn’t want to speak to us in our language,” he recalled. “They didn’t want us to get teased, I guess, and bullied. They wanted us to be Hawaiians or Americans. They didn’t want us to have the accent. I guess they didn’t want us to be picked on.”

Before connecting with Spiritual Journey, Daluson had gotten Polynesian tattoos to represent where he was born. But he increasingly wanted to represent his Filipino ancestry.

“After getting my first tattoo [at Spiritual Journey], I was actually finding out who I really was,” he said. “So that’s why I just kept going … and I just couldn’t stop! Because I just wanted to rep in a way that—I guess I was lost way back then, you know? And now it’s all coming out. I’m proud. I wear mine gladly, proudly.”

He became more involved with Mark of the Four Waves, and it made a big difference for him. He said he enjoyed meeting other Filipino people of different backgrounds and felt very welcome.

“Our tribe is like—it’s a family. It’s just not a bunch of people that have tattoos and just hang out. We’re, like, real family,” Daluson said.

Bautista agreed. “We share our joys, we share our laughter, and we support each other in times of grief, especially during different challenges,” she said. “I’m really honored and privileged to be a part of this tribe, this organization. And I feel like together, we are making progress to revitalization.”

Symbols mapping geographies 

In his presentation, Festin showed and described the many different regional styles of Filipino tattoos. The Spiritual Journey questionnaire clients take before getting their tattoos asks about where their Filipino ancestors originated and what their occupations were.

“I think a lot of people do not realize how diverse the Philippines is, especially in tattoos. Each region has their own way of doing their tattoo and has specific patterns according to their lifestyle. There was so much variation, in terms of the pattern design and the tools they are using,” Mangoba said. 

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“I am honored to be tattooed in my first traditional Filipino tattoo through batek, which is prominent in the Northern regions, where I came from. This is such a meaningful way to showcase and wear my Filipino pride every day.”

The Cartographies of Skin and Soil workshop invited participants to learn, reflect, connect and heal through the intertwined geographies of skin and soil, affirming the enduring narratives of Filipino identity, resistance and belonging. Through this powerful fusion of cartography and body art, participants engaged with stories etched into both skin and soil—stories of resilience, defiance and cultural memory. 

Matthew Melendez, a doctoral candidate and graduate assistant in the UH Mānoa College of Education, attended all the workshops and participated in the tattoo sessions. He said getting his tattoo was an amazing experience. “Receiving knowledge from the Tatak ng Apat na Alon tribe through our cultural portal of batok (tattooing) has profoundly transformed me from within,” he said.

Mangoba was also quite moved by his experience, and he hopes the event raised awareness about the meaning and importance of traditional Filipino tattoos. 

“It was such a prideful process,” he said. “Each tattoo represents one’s story or achievements. Getting a traditional Filipino tattoo is one way that I can honor those who have come before me and become more connected to my culture.”

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This event was co-sponsored by the Spiritual Journey Tattoo Shop, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and the Center for Philippine Studies.

Interested in supporting programs like this at Hamilton Library? Make a gift to the Philippine Collection Endowment Fund