TEN-TWENTY, LARO TAYO: Street-style art exhibit curated in DLSU-D

A flashback of a familiar Filipino childhood brings back nostalgic memories of playing out in the streets until the sun sets: Ten, twenty, let’s play a game!

Delving deeper into the concept of streets, the Visual & Performing Arts Production Unit (VPAPU) of De La Salle University–Dasmariñas (DLSU-D) curated and held its annual fundraising art exhibit, “OBRA 20: Ten-Twenty,” on November 11-16 as an artistic and metaphorical representation of socioeconomic disparities, societal roles, and human lives in the Philippines. The exhibit went beyond showcasing art, as it served as a fundraising platform—aligned with United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—to “give back to the community through art.”

VPAPU holds OBRA as an annual art gallery that expresses art through different mediums—traditional, digital, installation, and interactive—as an “eye-opener” about the “status, issues, and reality” in the Philippines. VPAPU and talented artists go hand-in-hand to create artworks and build meaningful annual exhibits of OBRA. For this year, the VPAPU’s art exhibit OBRA 20 was inspired by “Ten-Twenty,” a famous Filipino game, and the streets as a representation of the reality in the Philippines.  

As OBRA 20 aimed to showcase art through a street-style approach, it became an interactive and artistic experience that emphasized metaphorical symbols of the streets and the Ten-Twenty game. The exhibit sought to make the audience acknowledge the visible disparities and the intersections of human lives in the streets, which can be overlooked as just a mundane public space they are familiar with. Thus, OBRA 20 sought to communicate its theme, “Distansya sa magkahilerang mga linya: Laro at Buhay,” which means “distance between parallel lines: play and life.” 

The art exhibit interpreted the Ten-Twenty game as a metaphor of the Philippines from the game’s concept of laro (play) and buhay (life). It interprets laro as societal roles and buhay as human lives. In the Ten-Twenty game, children jump over stretched garters as they recite the words of ten-twenty until one hundred. As the game progresses, the stretched garters rise in level—from the lowest level, it rises to the level parallel with the ankles, to the legs, to the knees, and so on—until someone wins the game. With this concept of the game, VPAPU states that Ten-Twenty “mirrors life’s escalating struggles” in the context of “physical challenges” and “metaphorical dimensions of societal roles” in the Philippines. 

Ten-Twenty game is usually played in the streets where everything—struggles, differences, and mundane lives—merges. VPAPU highlights that the socioeconomic disparities of the country become visible in the streets where children, adults, and Filipinos intertwine in the midst of mundanity and constant flow of life. As VPAPU stated, the street serves as a “common thread in the lives of Filipinos.” 

In OBRA 20, VPAPU executed the street-style approach of art effectively, with the street-style interior designs, the names of the exhibit sections, and the artworks. The exhibit sections included the names “Brgy. May Pake,” “Para po Para Sakanila,” “Bawal Buwaya,” and “Sari-Saring Opinyon,” which are clever word plays of Filipino terms commonly used in the streets. Various student artists contributed to the exhibit through different mediums, as they showed diversity in art and interpretation of OBRA 20.

Since many Filipinos still face economic struggles, poverty, and infrastructure challenges, as documented by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA, 2023), both the concepts of Ten-Twenty and streets became relevant in OBRA 20 as a representation of Filipino struggles. The art exhibit not only showcased the differences and intersections of Filipinos through art but also made the audience acknowledge the societal problems and advocate for a better and sustainable world.

Aligned with the UN SDGs, OBRA 20 went beyond and towards community outreach, development, and sustainability through art. OBRA 20 served as a fundraising event for community outreach to promote sustainable development. VPAPU gave back to the Lasallian community by giving the exhibit’s proceeds and monetary donations to the DLSU-D scholarship program: VPAPU and Performing Arts Group Scholars, and DLSU-D Cultural Arts Office. VPAPU’s OBRA 20 further lent a hand towards Childhope Philippines Foundation, Inc, a non-profit organization “dedicated to transforming the lives of street children in Manila.”

OBRA 20 was connected with the SDGs 1, 3, 4, 10, 11, and 16 to promote and advocate sustainable development in the context of Filipino struggles. Aligned with SDGs 1 “No Poverty” and 3 “Good Health and Well-being”, the event aimed to “shed light on the societal divisions” and promote “mental health and well-being” through addressing “equal rights and specific challenges faced by people on the streets.” Moreover, OBRA 20 advocated for quality education, reduced inequalities, rights of marginalized groups and communities, justice, and effective institutions, all of which are intertwined with the SDGs. The art exhibit raised consciousness about the socioeconomic disparities and advocated for sustainable development for all.

Effectively using the beauty and power of art, VPAPU’s OBRA 20 intersected with community and sustainable development of the Filipino people. From the concept of Ten-Twenty game to the deeper reality of the streets, VPAPU curated a street-style exhibit that brought back nostalgic memories and shed light on realities of laro (play/societal roles) and buhay (life) in the Philippines.