Traditional Tattoos of Mota Lava

Mota Lava, also written Motalava and locally known as Mwotlap, is an island in the Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu. Mwotlap is also the name of the Oceanic language spoken on Mota Lava and neighboring Ra Island. European records first document the island during the 1606 expedition led by Pedro Fernández de Quirós, but its human history began many centuries earlier with the settlement of northern Vanuatu by Austronesian peoples.

These photographs, taken in 2006, document older women whose facial, arm, and leg tattoos preserve evidence of Mota Lava’s traditional tattooing practices. The surviving designs include lines, chevrons, radiating forms, human-like figures, and other geometric motifs. Facial markings commonly appear on the cheeks, around the eyes, or between the eyebrows, while some women also carry extensive designs on their arms and lower legs.

Accounts recorded on Mota Lava describe tattooing as a practice performed by specialist women using hand-tapped tools and dark pigment made from soot or burned plant material. Designs could be decorative, but some were associated with family standing, social rank, or local identity. The motifs and their meanings were governed by knowledge held within the community rather than by a single system shared throughout Vanuatu.

By 2006, the women photographed represented an older generation carrying tattoo traditions that were no longer widely practiced in their earlier form. Their markings provide an important visual record of Indigenous body art, women’s specialist knowledge, and cultural identity in the Banks Islands.