Spanish artist Jaume Plensa from Barcelona is one of the most acclaimed contemporary public artists in the world. His monumental sculptures, most notably his giant human figures, are permanently installed in major urban centers in Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, South Korea, Germany, the United States, Taiwan, and other countries.

Plensa has been the recipient of multiple prestigious national and international honors. These include the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 1993, the National Prize for Fine Art from the Government of Catalonia in 1997, and the Global Fine Art Award for Best Public Outdoor Installation in 2015, conferred for his exhibition “Together” at the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore—an official collateral event of the 56th Venice Biennale. Most recently, in 2024, he was ranked first on Mercados (Merca2.0)’s list of the “50 Most Influential Spanish Cultural Figures of the Year.”

We comprises a pair of human figures positioned face-to-face as if in conversation. The figures are formed from letters drawn from eight distinct alphabets, which serve as a metaphor for cultural and linguistic diversity—while the figures themselves signify the shared universality of the human condition. The dynamic interplay between language and humanity constitutes a foundational theme in Jaume Plensa’s works. As he articulates:
“Letters may seem like nothing, but when combined they form words, words form texts, and texts express human thought. It's like a temple being built around a cornerstone, and on that foundation, cities, countries, continents, and a universe are created.”

For Plensa, literature functions as a sustained source of artistic and intellectual inspiration. The typographic elements employed in his sculptures reflect this engagement, beginning with Latin and progressively incorporating other linguistic systems, including Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Cyrillic, Korean, and Hindi. Each script is endowed with its own aesthetic and cultural specificity, yet when interwoven they collectively symbolize the rich heterogeneity and pluralistic ethos of the contemporary world.

Plensa has experimented with multiple modalities for the presentation of these characters—whether draped as curtains, inscribed upon the human form, or most iconically, assembled into monumental anthropomorphic structures composed of interconnected letters. These sculptural forms have emerged as a distinctive hallmark of his practice, emblematic of his broader philosophical exploration of identity, communication, and collective memory.