Mo Naga (MoranngamKhaling) is an ethnic Uipo Naga tattoo artist. Originally from the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, he trained as a fashion designer at the prestigious National Institute of Fashion Technology in Hyderabad where he started tattooing fifteen years ago. In 2008, Mo Naga opened his first tattoo studio in Delhi, and in the same year he became the brand ambassador for Lee Jeans. Over the course of his career, he has become recognized as one of India’s most prominent tattoo artists. Mo Naga was one of only three India-based artists featured in The World Atlas of Tattoo (Yale University Press), which chronicles the work of one hundred leading global tattooists, and his artistic accomplishments have been featured in dozens of media features. In 2008, Lee Jeans promoted him as India’s Best Tattooist in a national campaign.
After tattooing professionally in New Delhi for several years, he left the capital in 2012 and moved to Guwahati, Assam (the gateway city to the Naga homeland) to open the first tattoo studio and tattoo school in India’s northeast called Headhunters’ Ink. Armed with social capital and inspired by the desire to resurrect traditional Naga tattooing through training the next generation of artists, his seventy-five square meter space provided two courses that offered basic design, tattoo machine mechanics, clinical hygiene and sterilization practices, among other offerings. Subsequently his base of tattoo operations moved to Dimapur, the capital of Nagaland state, then back to his home village in Manipur where Headhunters’ Inknow operates as a seasonal enterprise. In order to sustain the tattoo school financially, however, Mo Naga opened a tattoo studio called Godna Gram in Delhi where he and his team of tattoo artists are dedicated to promoting Naga tattoo art and culture through contemporary renditions of traditional patterns and responsible tattooing.
(An excerpt from https://www.larskrutak.com/mo-naga-naga-tattoo-revival/)