Black Forest: Nashville Town Hall
Led by Fall 2026 Berg Global Artist-in-Residence Fellow Ekene Ijeoma, Black Forest is planting trees for Black ancestors and distributing multimedia on Black Nature, as a living monument and archive for Black lives. Ijeoma founded Black Forest in his lab, Poetic Justice, at MIT (18-24’) during the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement in 2022. In response to the uncounted lives shortened and harmed by racial and environmental inequalities, he was called to plant over 40,000 trees across the US and abroad in 12 years. He partnered with governments, organizations, corporations, and communities to plant over 600 trees across 9 cities, memorializing ancestors while mitigating heat islands, food deserts, asthma and cancer alleys—for their descendants.
For his residency in the Department of Art at Vanderbilt, he’s organizing community events to plant trees across Vanderbilt campus and spaces in North Nashville including schools, churches, parks and gardens. He’s inviting Vanderbilt to vote on trees and places on site here.
Admission: Free and open to all. Food and drinks included. RSVP required.
ABOUT BLACK FOREST
Black Forest (BF) is planting trees for Black ancestors and distributing multimedia on Black Nature, as a living monument and archive for Black lives. BF was founded by Ekene Ijeoma in his lab, Poetic Justice, at MIT (18-24’) during the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement in 2022. In response to the uncounted lives shortened and harmed by racial and environmental inequalities, he was called to plant over 40,000 trees across the US and abroad in 12 years. We’ve partnered with governments, organizations, corporations, and communities to plant over 600 trees across 9 cities, memorializing ancestors while mitigating heat islands, food deserts, asthma and cancer alleys—for their descendants.
Black Forest School is a series of programs and network of spaces (including libraries) focused on archiving and presenting Black perspectives on nature across various forms of expression and modes of knowledge. In May, we presented Black Forest Library as a special project at the 1-54 Art Fair, which ARTnews named one of the best booths! The Library featured a site-specific collection of 40 books, 40 plants, and artworks by Devin N. Morris and Madjeen Isaac. These items were placed throughout an installation of 168 milk crates assembled into a reading room, with LED signs displaying the names of items and ancestors, as well as a game table with checkers/chess and a Mancala board, inviting play. Volunteers invited fairgoers into the space and guided them through our collection.
BF is building communities around trees that will welcome them into their families and neighborhoods for generations. We’re funded, hosted, planted, and managed by people across many races, ethnicities, and ages who believe in ecological and racial equity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ekene Ijeoma is a Nigerian-American conceptual artist who researches social, political, and environmental systems to poetically expose inequities and mutually empower communities. His multidisciplinary practice spans community-based landworks, interactive light installations, and data-driven performances that expand on Black American and African experiences, traditions, and symbols through design and technology.
Ijeoma’s interdisciplinary projects include community events where trees are planted for Black lives in green spaces across the US, jazz performances in which notes are removed from the Star-Spangled Banner at the increasing rate of incarceration in the US, interactive sculptures in which a wage-based height map of NYC is submerged in water at rising rent costs, participatory installation that invites participants to synchronize their breaths and energies with his and another that invites them to hold hands together to activate lights and symbols.
His work has been presented by Boston Public Art Triennial (2025), Bloomberg Philanthropies (2025), Dutch Design Week (2025), Getty PST Art (2025), Onassis Foundation (2024), Van Alen Institute (2022), the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis (2021), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2020), Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (2020), The Arts Club of Chicago (2019), The Kennedy Center (2019, 2017), Annenberg Space for Photography (2016), Neuberger Museum of Art (2016), and Storefront for Art and Architecture (2015).
His work has also been supported by Architectural League of New York (2025), Opportunity Agenda (2025), Community Engagement (2025), MIT Media Lab (2018–2024), New York Foundation for the Arts (2022, 2016), New York State Council on the Arts (2021), Creative Capital (2019), Map Fund (2019), Wave Farm (2018), and The Kennedy Center (2017).
He studied Information Technology (BS) at Rochester Institute of Technology (2006) and Interaction Design (MS) at Domus Academy (2008) in Milan, Italy. From 2019–2024, he founded Poetic Justice, an MIT lab and program that reimagined social justice through the arts by producing works at the scale of systems. In 2022, he founded Black Forest, a multisite participatory artwork and community forestry initiative planting over 40,000 trees for Black lives across all 50 states and producing a series of short films documenting his efforts.
His work and practice have been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Cultured, The Art Newspaper, Frieze, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Boston Globe.
ABOUT THE BERG GLOBAL FELLOWSHIP
The College of Arts and Science is proud to host the Berg Global Artist-in-Residence Fellowship program. The program brings accomplished visual artists to Vanderbilt for a residential fellowship designed to support the dissemination of new perspectives on the visual arts throughout the Vanderbilt community.
For more information, visit Berg Global Artist-in-Residence Fellowship or contact the Vanderbilt Department of Art and Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice