In collaboration with Mashabane Rose Architects, Marco Cianfanelli, a major award winner of the 2004 Brett Kebble Art Awards, who received R60,000 for his 9.2 metre long laser-cut steel sculpture Timeline, has been short-listed to create a multi-million rand project, the Nelson Mandela Statue to Freedom, that will be erected in Port Elizabeth.

Cianfanelli's talent, together with the architects associated with the Apartheid Museum and the Hector Peterson Museum in Soweto, proved a formidable combination. Cianfanelli is one of the few South African artists with the expertise to produce public sculpture of this magnitude. His public sculptures include Pikitup Sculpture, the Hollard Street Mall Project in Johannesburg's CBD, 2001 and his commissioned work at the Rosebank African Market, Johannesburg, 2000.

The collaborators' design is one of three short-listed from more than 100 submissions. The other finalists are Aloeides Clark consortium and Equilibrium Studio Architects.

The brief from organisers Mandela Bay Development Agency was to create a sculpture that chronicled the struggle for democracy and recognised the high price paid for freedom in South Africa, acknowledging Nelson Mandela as of iconic importance. Cianfanelli and Mashabane Rose's design consists of a "forest of tall steel poles which when seen from a particular converging point, collectively reveal a portrait of Mandela's face". The statue, to be approximately 110m high, will be positioned where the beach meets the harbour in Port Elizabeth's Mandela Bay.

A decision on the final submitted designs is expected on July 18, Nelson Mandela's birthday.