In this towering sculpture, Spanish artist Jaume Plensa presents a teenage girl shielding her eyes with her hands. The protective gesture evokes different interpretations: is she blocking the world from her view, and thus urging us to recognize our individual responsibility to see what’s around us? Or could she be reminding us of our interior landscape of thoughts and dreams?

Previously installed at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, the work is part of a series in which the artist monumentalizes the likenesses of young women in public spaces, calling attention to who is and isn’t represented in large-scale public art. For Plensa, immortalizing a young girl on the precipice of her adult life captures the popular saying that, without doubt, the future is female.