MINNA, 2022

JAUME PLENSA
b. 1955, Spain

Minna, 2022

Stainless steel
16.3 x 12.3 x 16.4 ft

Location: 1809 Meridian Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139

Generously donated by Irma and Norman Braman to the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Collection

Fascinated by the duality of the tangible and intangible, Jaume Plensa creates monumental sculptures that appear to transcend time and space, despite their formidable size. His works in the public realm are celebrations of life that elevate their own physical material to the unseeable.

In the mesh portrait Minna, Plensa explores the concept of the invisible in everyday life. For the artist, the most important things in life are invisible such as love, compassion, and hope. Paying homage to that concept, he distances himself from rendering specific individuals and instead lingers upon a sense of humanity made up of steel mesh, drawn in space. The stainless steel lines defining the topography of the skin are precise, illustrating how amazing our own form is from the outside. Yet, what remains amidst the subject’s delicate mesh also represents the intricacies of the inside, such as the inside of an ear. Plensa evades the need for completeness, instead stirring viewers to weave together the faces from material lines that define the final border between space and emptiness. Minna is the essence of this intervention–the unfinished face traversed by light, reminding viewers that we are all beautiful outside, but even more beautiful inside.