Harmony Park is a sculpture and garden that samples the checkered pattern – a symbol of unity found in the Maryland flag and kente fabrics. Visitors are encouraged to find harmony through touch and sight. The park design features two interactive installations designed to channel energy between people and reflects the artist’s premise that communal reconciliation and ecological restoration are intrinsically linked:
Energy Poles: Checkers – Participants are invited to use touch to connect to the 11 light poles, including connecting distant poles by holding hands with others. The poles are arranged to form the silhouette of a roof when viewed from the side, suggesting the metaphor of this country as a home that takes all of us to build.
Sight Lines: Checkers – Located at the back of the park, this installation invites participants to use sight to connect across 11 stone stools.
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 upon Black-American and African experiences, symbols and practices through design and technology. In recent years, environmental justice and ecological restoration have emerged as recurring themes in his work. In 2022, Ijeoma founded Black Forest, an initiative to plant over 40,000 trees for Black lives and archive Black nature across the U.S. and the diaspora. His work has been presented by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, The Kennedy Center, Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.
