Designer and professor Monique Lizardo discusses how Indigenous body markings—plus ceramics, weavings, and other art forms—can reveal a lot about how past societies looked and functioned.
In April 2023, Vogue premiered its oldest cover model: 106-year-old Apo Whang-Od, an Indigenous Kalinga tattoo artist who was preserving the ancient practice of traditional batok in the Philippines. The hand-tapped etchings of diamonds and woven patterns on Whang-Od’s body stood out to Monique Lizardo, a Filipino-Canadian architectural designer and professor, when she saw the magazine, but it wasn’t until she went back to the Philippines in December of that same year to get tattooed by Whang-Od that her research on the traditional tattoos as viable architectural and historical archives began to take form.
It turns out that the markings on Whang-Od’s body were the same patterns commonly found etched onto doors, furniture, and even traditional clothing in the northern Philippines. As Lizardo began learning more about the meanings of each pattern—certain ticks and dashes that symbolized headhunting success, beauty, or protection—she found that they helped tell a story about the lived experiences of people in ancient Kalinga societies. These symbols could be read as indicators of their bearers’ specific environmental and social conditions, rather than only artistic preferences. Perhaps, she thought, she could connect the dots between architecture and tattoos, treating the body as a map to help trace what was important to folks at that time and better understand their realities.
I spoke with Lizardo about her research, and how, yes, tattoos, but also ceramics, blankets, and other art mediums can be studied as living artifacts that can orient us to a specific time and place, and in some cases, give insight about what it might’ve felt like to be there.
Filipino-Canadian architectural designer and professor Monique Lizardo traveled to the mountain village of Buscalan in the Philippines to receive traditional Kalinga hand-tapped tattoos, or batok, from mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattoo artist) Apo Whang-Od.
Photos courtesy Monique Lizardo
Being trained in architecture gives you a specific perspective, but I love seeing your personal history and culture as an entry point to connect your interests. Can you describe the type of work you’re doing: the what and the why of it?
Monique Lizardo: I initially developed this methodology of looking at art history as a means of studying traditional architecture by looking at traditional tattoos. This led to looking at other case studies, such as ceramics near Chihuahua, Mexico, and African-Canadian quilts from the interwar years and what they resemble, to start to reconfigure what architecture might have looked like at that time period in that specific place. By looking at symbols in traditional craft, we can start to think about what these spaces looked like beyond colonial history.
Since you’ve started broadening the scope of what you look at, has there been a particular piece of art that has fundamentally changed the way that you’ve approached this work?
One of the tattoos that really stuck out was these sort of dash tick mark tattoos. These stand for headhunting and are typically found up north in the mountains in the Philippines. Back in the day, warriors would have these tick mark tattoos closer to their face: behind the ear or centered on the chest or on the face. Each tick mark meant that they were successful in killing one person. This tattoo was really important to my research, not just its existence or how crucial it was to the culture of that specific area, but because people don’t get that tattoo anymore. The reason why that’s so interesting is because it means that these tattoos have meanings and that if people aren’t killing for safety anymore, that reality isn’t necessary for 2026. If people are still tattooing a pattern for rice paddies or mountain peaks or python scales, that means that it’s still true to the values or the reality of today.
By looking at each of the tattoos of our many elders we can start to understand the architecture in broad terms, but also just how spaces felt…not just built architecture, but imagining a space in relation to what these tattoos meant. For example, a space where warriors who were really successful and had a lot of these tattoos probably meant your area was very safe, or if a lot of people had rice paddy tattoos, could signify that they were in abundance during that time.
I’m reminded of this SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) tattoo technique called deq, which literally translates to knocking, that resembles the technique you’re referring to here. It’s basically a type of stick and poke that also carries different, specific meanings. It’s interesting that this thread is found across several Indigenous cultures, while also being really specific to the landscape that you’re looking at in the Philippines. What else can this type of spatial or embodied information reveal to us that maybe conventional archives or mapping tend to leave out?
One case study that might show how far, or maybe another direction, we can push this, is an example that I’ve taken from this exhibit that David Woods curated called The Secret Codes: African Nova Scotian Quilts. This exhibit showcased different quilts that people would put outside of their door as if they’re hanging laundry, but what it would actually do is secretly code to other Black folks routes to safety or freedom. They’d have markings symbolizing things like, "You’ve arrived at a decision point, multiple routes to freedom, choose a path," or things like, "Travel in disguise, change identities, move between the clothing of a slave and the clothing of a free person." So looking at this exhibit, I’ve created some speculative landscapes or speculative landscape renderings of what an environment might look like if someone comes across each one of these 1930s quilt patterns.
What we’re delving into now is what it means to study architectural history beyond looking at dates and listening to individualized stories. By looking at Indigenous art, we can incorporate their voices and put ourselves in a first-person perspective to understand, or at least start to understand, what it might’ve felt like to be there.
Traditional tattoos in the Kalinga province in the Cordillera Mountains feature various symbols and patterns with specific meanings, like rice paddies, which according to Lizardo symbolize beauty for women, and python scales, worn by women to preserve youth.
From left: Photo by John Warburton-Lee/Alamy; photo by Christian J. Kober/Alamy
How do you think this research and its findings challenges the more traditional modes of what record keepers deem "relevant" or "accurate"?
I think the biggest thing that it challenges is what even counts as architecture; architecture isn’t just about buildings or even landscape. Architecture is space. If we’re looking at speculative landscapes for someone who may have had a headhunting tattoo, it could be a space that defines where they might have met or congregated with their group. Architecture is the way that we form natural ground. Architecture doesn’t just look at a singular building, but its impact at the urban scale, how accessible a certain site is, and how people arrive at it.
I’m really curious how you’ve brought your traditional training and way of thinking as an architect and designer to things like bodies, textiles, and objects. How do you think other architects/planners/designers could change their practices if they began treating cultural artifacts as more than aesthetic references, but as spatial archives?
Architects are super suited to read social implications and impacts when looking at images. So for instance, if an architect is looking at a floor plan, we would instinctually see that the living room, dining room, and kitchen should be next to each other and all the quiet "programs" are probably like a hallway away, things like libraries or bedrooms. Maybe if we look at an elevation drawing, an architect might see it as more than dimensions and directions, but a relationship of how the sun affects the pedestrian experience due to the height, size, or the shape of a building. Architects are trained to read these insights from images and now it’s just about translating that into looking at art.
Land acknowledgements are a start, but we can build upon them with information about what the space used to be called or was used for. I think in doing this exercise, buildings can become an immersive teacher about what spaces were like. We can use these insights to be more structural about how we acknowledge Indigenous voices. This research has helped me understand women and elders as knowledge bearers. It’s also helped me consider the planning of shared public spaces. Like, how can we design these third spaces to allow for people of different walks of life to enjoy spaces safely and together? Maybe it means having light at night so it feels safer. Maybe it means that there are no hidden corners so that women or children feel safer because they’re seen. This is something everyone can engage with simply by being curious and asking where things are from.
Lizardo’s research looks at other traditional arts and crafts as a way of studying history. The prehistoric archaeological site of Paquimé in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico, (right) had an extensive ceramic production full of recurring symbols and motifs related to their surroundings, according to the architectural designer.
From left: Photo from Getty; photo by David G. Houser/Alamy
See the full story on Dwell.com: Can Traditional Tattoos Help Us Understand Architectural History?
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