An installation of crushed stainless-steel water tanks shaped like bitten apples forms Pete Jimenez’ meditation on Biblical excerpts. He reframes the fall in the Garden of Eden through the looming threat of water scarcity in the Philippines. The thirty-one apples correspond to the days of a month, suggesting both cyclical time and a countdown, a finite measure of a resource we often presume to be inexhaustible.

Provocative yet darkly playful, the sculptures transform industrial debris into a moral allegory. Through the strenuous compression of discarded material, Jimenez stages an act of destruction that becomes creation. The tanks, once vessels storing vital sustenance, are rendered fragile and wounded. In their damaged forms, they evoke desire, consumption, and consequence.

In an archipelago surrounded by water yet threatened by its scarcity, the allegory sharpens. Poor water management, watershed degradation, pollution, rapid urban expansion, and climate volatility strain an already limited supply. Metro Manila, which relies heavily on insufficient reservoir systems, remains particularly exposed. Longer droughts, irregular rainfall, leaking infrastructure, and contaminated rivers intensify the crisis, with far-reaching implications for public health, food security, and economic stability, billions wasted annually.

Drawing from Deuteronomy 32:10:  “He found him in a desert land, And in the howling waste of a wilderness, He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the apple (the pupil) of His eye,”  Jimenez reclaims the apple as an emblem of divine care as much as human transgression. It is a rupture in our stewardship of the natural world. The fall from Eden becomes a contemporary parable: paradise forfeited, a modern day exile of our own making. 

However, the work of Jimenez not only brings to light these issues but also encourages us to think about solutions. Experts have advised improving water conservation at both household and industrial levels, investing in alternative water sources such as rainwater harvesting, upgrading infrastructure to reduce leaks, and enforcement of pollution control laws to protect water safety. Despite the weightiness of both his materials and his themes, Jimenez injects artistic wit, creating fluid and recognizable shapes that hold their own form of beauty. 

The objects, at once humorous and foreboding, carry unexpected elegance. Balancing irony with urgency, the work resists despair. Instead, it proposes empathy and responsibility: a recognition that what we regard as “the apple of our eye” must extend beyond symbolism to the very systems that sustain life. In merging religious allegory with urban social reality, Jimenez offers an exhibit that is both cautionary and hopeful. He calls for greater awareness of the fragile systems that sustain us.

By Stephanie Frondoso