Poetic Justice to Plant 40,000 Trees as Black Lives Memorial

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An ecological project led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers will see 40,000 trees planted by volunteers and local forestry organisations across the United States over the next eight years as a living monument to Black lives.

Conceived by the conceptual artist and professor Ekene Ijeoma, who founded the MIT research group Poetic Justice in 2019, Black Forest seeks to bring attention to the Covid-19 pandemic's impact on Black residents, whose death toll was twice that of white populations. Of the 1.1 million Americans who had died of the disease by fall 2023, 157,000 were Black.

Impacted by zoning policies and a privatised health sector, Black neighbourhoods in the United States are commonly deprived of access to basic infrastructure such as green spaces, fresh produce, and clean air, leading to higher rates of diabetes and heart and lung disease. Black Forest nods to the effects of this segregation, seeking to improve local air quality through the planting of trees, which further contribute shade as protection from heat waves.

Ijeoma, whose practice centres social and environmental issues, design, and technology, alludes to air as a metaphor linking respiratory illness from the pandemic to George Floyd's plea to the police to be allowed to breathe, and increasingly polluted cities.

He traces the conception of Black Forest to his sighting of a chopped-down tree in the streets, which reminded him of Michael Brown, a Black teenager who was killed by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, his body left outside for hours. Each tree carries a QR code leading to an archive of stories of lives lost to drugs, violence, and illness, collected from friends and family via phone recordings and a web form.

Alongside the archive, the project is supplemented with publications on Black urban forestry and feminist ecology and short documentary films capturing the process. The public is invited to contribute to the archive, offer their land for the project, and volunteer in various capacities.

Since November 2022, Black Forest has planted around 300 trees in California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Rhode Island, and Washington.

'When we think about people who are concerned with the environment, it's rare that Black people appear,' Ijeoma told The Art Newspaper. 'I hope people sign up to participate to contribute to this monument and rewrite this narrative.' —[O]

Main image: Ekene Ijeoma, Black Forest, St. Louis (Midtown) (2023). Courtesy the artist. Photo: Anthony Eggert.