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No child’s play in Matayataya


White is what greets you when you enter the gallery that’s been transformed into a playground by Manolo Sicat’s Matayataya. The first reaction is one of joy: the kind that play allows, no matter how old we get, especially because it is reminiscent of the kids that we were when the streets were safe to play in. But it sinks in soon enough: play here is everything and violent, because the streets have changed, because the streets are now testament to what has become the sad state of an impoverished nation. To say that this exhibit is just about the violence of poverty wouldn’t do Sicat’s work justice. In fact it isn’t so much poverty as it is inequality, it isn’t so much inequality as it is injustice, it isn’t so much what’s unjust as it is how all these tie together into sadness and helplessness when children – and all that they represent – are objects and subjects. The cold cast marble sculptures of Matayataya are precisely such: children at play are its necessary subjects, made into mere objects by the contexts within which they live.

“Minanang Lupa" and “Minanang Langit" mimic the truth of social inequality.
“Minanang Lupa" and “Minanang Langit" are two little boys, acting out the truth of social inequality: one boy is atop a pedestal, in Crocs and a shirt made of coins, his arms akimbo, his stance of an old man’s, his tongue out towards the boy below the pedestal. That boy beneath him is his anti-thesis: in a tattered shirt and large slippers, on tiptoe, arms reaching to the one who’s closer to the sky. What works here is the fact of mimicry: the boy in “Minanang Langit" is both adult (the stance, the arms on waist) and child (sticking out his tongue). That the boy in “Minanang Lupa" only knows to be boy, in the act of pleading to be taken on, can only make the class difference and its multiple layers more stark.
“Paghahanap sa Itinago 1 and 2" reveal the deprivation of childish innocence.
On the opposite wall is an installation of what looks like a paean to hide-and-seek, except that in “Paghahanap sa Itinago 1 and 2" what should be about childlike anticipation and wonder disappears. Instead, what’s here are two boys, covering their eyes with their hands yes, but only to reveal that they might peek through their fingers. What's here are these two boys knowing what it is that they’re missing: symbols of their childhood are nothing but gaping holes and impressions, shadows of toys they cannot have. In the other sculptures here, what strikes one is the lack of enjoyment really, if not the literal rendering of play as violent.
A determined boy with clenched fists jumps over "Luksuhan ang Tinik"
In “Pitik Mulat 1 to 3" three heads drilled with letters are lit up with orange bulbs, creating a hodgepodge of letters on the wall behind it. It’s crucial that these faces are all in the act of screaming, and of seeming agony, as if these letters were failing to define them, as if these letters were alien and strange and unknown to them, even as these are imprinted on their heads. In “Luksuhan ang Tinik" meanwhile, the hands are literally made of thorns, endangering the boy jumping over it, who is nevertheless determined, with fists clenched and flight certain. But it’s in the quieter games that Sicat’s work is more powerful. In “Batobatopic ng mga Pangarap 1 and 2" two kids are in the act of play, one holding out the rock and the other holding out paper, yet neither of them looking like they’ve won, their tattered clothes and forlorn faces rendering them both nothing but victims, nothing but two kids playing a game of chance even as there’s no enjoyment in it, nor is there a chance of winning. This idea is taken a couple of steps farther in two of the most haunting sculptures here: “Bawal Tumayo 1 and 2." Here one two-dimensional boy’s body is riddled with stop signs, hangs from the ceiling, hands up as if in surrender. Opposed to it is a boy crouched on the floor, back against the wall, seemingly waiting for something, but also just staring blankly into nothing. The fact that both of these are static images, one thin and unreal, the other without a future in sight, the fact that both are in such inaction but with weight and weightlessness of beings that are difficult to ignore, is really the line that Sicat straddles in this exhibit as a whole. It’s also on that line that the challenge to the spectator lies. Because these sculptures are difficult to bear, sad and painful in equal turns, the sense of helplessness and dead ends so potent it permeates the room despite its paean to play. Here it becomes clear that when Sicat asserts the notion of taya, these children as subjects and objects are exactly that: they are at stake, their lives on the line. Here’s the premise of the feeling of despair and the very clear sense of suffering that’s in this stark white playground. Here’s where the spectator might be forced into an amount of anger, and maybe revolt. Because too, here is Matayataya’s play: Tag! You’re it. - YA, GMA News Matayataya ran at the Mag:net Gallery in Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City in October 2011.
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