Award-winning Filipino-American public artist Jefrë’s mammoth figural statue rises at SM Megamall as a reminder of the value of the hours and minutes of our lives

Jefre Manuel Figueras is a placemaker.

As a public artist, Jefrë, as he is more widely known, has a rich background in urban design and landscape architecture, out of which he has harnessed a masterful approach to transforming spaces and creating stronger connections between people and the public spaces in which dwell their collective needs, desires, dreams, aspirations, and visions.

Collaboration between this Orlando-based Filipino-American public artist and the SM Supermalls is bound to happen, as the latter has always invested in exciting art concepts, such as the Art Walk and Art Center at SM Megamall. Public art and memorable spaces are a big thing at SM Supermalls, finding generous, not-to-be-missed expression in the likes of the iconic Globe at the SM Mall of Asia, the Cube at SM City Seaside Cebu, Cubi by National Artist Arturo Luz at the Podium, and the colorful Philippine animals at the Skypark at SM Aura Premier.

Jefrë is a big name in contemporary art, big as in mammoth. So is his work, whose grandiosity in size and scale arrests attention, catches the eyes, sometimes even shocks the senses. In an interview with Museum Week late last year, he divulged he was “currently working on a 24-story sculpture in my homeland, Philippines. That will be our version of the Statue of Liberty.” The said sculpture is called Victor, a figural statue of perforated steel with its fist raised to welcome travelers across a bridge in Manila.

Born, raised, and schooled in Chicago, Jefrë proudly traces his roots to San Pedro, Laguna and Sto. Domingo, Ilocos Sur.

But that comes later. Right now, the Jefrë-of-the-moment is Time Sculpture, a collab with SM Supermalls, was officially unveiled in front of SM Megamall last July 29, 2021.

Time Sculpture, 12 meters tall, is part of Jefrë’s groundbreaking, genre-defining “Baks” series, a collection of larger-than-life humanoids, shiny, and shimmery, and bouncing off the light, with building blocks for heads. In fact, the series took its name from the phonetic pronunciation of the English word box, a metaphorical statement on what builds cities, what gives cities life and character and distinctive features, as well as on what makes people tick—time, love, faith, joy, vision.

Like many of the works in “Baks,” Time Sculpture is made of mirror stainless steel in a complex of three-dimensional planes, mesmerizing and dazzling. The head, shaped like a box, a signature for the collection, provides much of the contextual clues and symbolic expression—a man looking at his watch, engaged with time, if not consumed by it, worried, concerned, restless, in the moment yet elsewhere. It’s a reminder of the value of time, as well as its power and how easily it can be wasted, especially in a city like Manila aspiring to go as fast as a mile a minute.

Time Sculpture is just the placemaker we need along EDSA, where time is often trapped in the rush hour, and it was exactly why SM Supermalls thought it best to team up with Jefrë “to make something of presence, to have something on a pedestrian scale as people don’t really look at the building from the ground floor,” in such a busy intersection.

Time Sculpture, designed to be a permanent fixture at SM Megamall, no doubt will bring life to this busy strip and represent the life that thrives there, in the hustle and bustle of Mandaluyong.

Jefrë is the perfect choice of artist to do the project. Born and raised in Chicago, and schooled at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the Ohio State University and Architectural Association in London, this 2012 Emerging Artist of the Year proudly traces his roots to San Pedro, Laguna and Sto. Domingo, Ilocos Sur, where his parents were originally from.

He was in his previous life an urban planner and designer at the Chicago architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill or SOM until a heart attack threw him a curve ball in 2007. Saved only by a triple bypass surgery, he was sent off to a related but different path, which allowed him to dream big, in pursuit of which he is now a headturning international figure in public art, having won many commissions and competitions around the world, from the Bahamas to Miami, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and New Orleans to London, Rome, and Abu Dhabi.

Jefrë considers that what he has been given is an opportunity to use art as more than decoration but also as a means to provide a sense of place and to create emotion for both the residents and the visitors of certain places—and to be very big and bold and blunt about it.

Elsewhere in the Philippines, this award-winning artist’s work “Talking Heads,” a permanent installation featuring six large sculptures, has found a home at the lobby of SM Prime’s Five Ecom Center Building, as have his larger-than-life sculptures of carabao, eagle, rooster, and tarsier.

With hope, Jefrë’s mammoth art, which is currently going places in the Philippines, will make us all dream big too.