There are many ways to save. You can document it, put it in the museum, grab it on the camera or just write about it.
When Marannga Huling started worrying about ancient, but fading traditions of tattoos in the northeast of India, none of these approaches seemed perfect. He wanted, he says, help him germinate to life.
That’s how the 40-year-old guy created a “Tattoo Garden”.
“In our culture, every element that goes into a tattoo once was a living being. It is a transfer of nature to nature,” he says.
Thus, on the fourth edge in the village of Haby, Manipur, its tattoos contains 25 types of plants that represent raw materials used in 10 tribes.
In addition, there are photos and explanations of samples; Throughout the manipurus, Naganda and Tripura, the points and strips serve as markers of identity, age, class, family condition, and even how many opponents the brave warrior died in battle.
“It is not difficult to grow plants because they come from the ground,” he says.
What was difficult is to gather information about what different tribes are used and what some more rare models mean. Khaling spent 12 years, traveling through the villages in three states, taking pictures of models and writing details.
“With fewer and fewer older ones, the transfer of knowledge becomes complicated,” he says.
It all started for Haling with your own awakening. He studied at the National Fashion Technology Institute (NIFT) in Hyderabad in 2008 when he came to the image of the traditional UIPO tattoo.
Khaling is one of the 2000 UIPO AKA Khoibu tribe.
The more he studied the tattoos of his tribe, the more intrigued. He spent most of his childhood with relatives in Delhi, sent by his parents, like many children, to avoid them from the Stipura’s feud, with its blockages and the sectarian conflict.
He was 24 years old now, and yet it was all new for him.
At this point, he was impressed that this once aspect of his community’s identity was summed up. Younger people did not choose traditional patterns that usually cover parts of the face, chest, neck, arms and feet.
Others, as he grew up, not knowing these models.
He decided to preserve what he could out of ancient art.
In 2009, he graduated from Nift, Hyderabad and moved to Delhi to open his first tattoo studio. In 2012, he decided to move the tattoo studio to Manipur and conduct his research together. He crossed between Delhi and Manipur so by 2019, when he returned home forever.
Since then, he worked on the creation of tattoos and shelters of knowledge on his four hectares, part of which was a gift from a cousin and part of the gifts from the village of Hobe. Among the current troubles he did not open the garden for the public. In the end, it will be open to visitors at the previous meeting, he says.
Haling hopes to go beyond tattoos, turning the plot into a tribal center of art and design. “I want to work with masters on bamboo and cane furniture, traditional textiles and towels. I plan to make this place with intent,” he says.
Meanwhile, his efforts in the documentation and the model of tattoos he helped to preserve. They are exhibited at the Humboldt Museum in Berlin and the Vancouver Museum in Canada. It was presented in the tattoo of the anthropologists of Lars Carrutaka Tattoo (Yale University Press; 2015) and will be presented in the upcoming traditions of tattoos steep: humanity through skin and ink (Princeton University Press; 2025). “I have been studying his work since 2013,” Krutka says.
Haling is proud of his work, but does not consider it extraordinary.
In his family, he said, his father Mosiel Salesangiel Khaling, a respected native linguist, worked on the UIPO language dictionary for decades. His brothers, one teacher and the other – a social worker, lives at the root in society.
Many of his tribe works in his own way, he adds to preserve what he can go out of the heritage.
