Two sticks topped with sculpted deities, one completed by a needle, the other used as a hammer: here are the Iban tattooers' only tools. Cliff, passionate with traditional tattooing methods, makes them upon request in his Kota Kinabalu studio.
As he was living in Vancouver, Cliff, then 29, discovered hand-tapping tattoo as he visited the North American aboriginal communities who still practice it. He then lived in Papua New Guinea, where he pursued his discovery of tribal tattoo. Then, he got a sak yant tattoo, a sacred Thai mark on his hand, by Ajarn Man, based on the island of Koh Phangan.
In 2001, the 29 year old young man quit his designer job in the sector of video games at Electronic Arts and came back to his native land in the State of Sabah, north-west of Borneo. Since then, he has been tattooing updated Iban patterns at Orangutan Studio, a big shop with raw decoration, looking like a carpentry workshop, where he makes sticks sets.
The making of a set requires a machete, a week of work and a lot of precision. Cliff works with hard materials, like iron wood from Borneo, called belian in the local language, a red wood called belabah and an orange wood called sereya.
http://www.orangutanink.com/
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