From Where I Stand LSU Architecture Alum Ivan O’Garro Part of Society’s Cage Team Peering through the bars of the cage on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., onlookers are greeted with a powerful message: white society has oppressed people of color for centuries and continues to do so today. This is Society’s Cage. LSU architecture alum Ivan O’Garro (BArch 2012) was a member of the team that designed Society’s Cage, an art installation created in the aftermath of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murders in 2020. It was installed on the National Mall in fall of 2020.
The design process was fast-paced, decisive, collaborative, and, in many ways, came naturally, he said. “One of our strengths was the level of trust among team members,” O’Garro said. “Each person had a specific role to play. We held each other to a high standard of excellence and accountability. That trust remained paramount because of the heaviness of the vessel’s message; we had to acknowledge that we were simply messengers delivering the truth.”
The installation features a bold interpretive pavilion sculpted to symbolize the historic forces of racialized state violence. The experience educates visitors and functions as a sanctuary to refect, record, and share personal thoughts. It is conceived in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement as a mechanism for building empathy and healing, according to Smithgroup.
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The goal of the design team, led by Dayton Schroeter and Julian Arrington, was to use the art piece to spark open and truthful dialogue around systemic racism in America by presenting the harsh truths of the continuum of racial injustice beautifully, O’Garro said.
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The installation is designed to evoke strong emotions, to impact the viewer, and make one think about the complex history of the United States, culminating in where we are today. “Ideally, the work will continue to travel the country and help diferent communities have real discussions centered on facts.”
Society’s Cage. Photos Courtesy @dani_photogram.
O’Garro focused on research, data analytics, and interpretive text aggregation. He poured over volumes of historical data related to the four aspects of institutionalized racial violence depicted by the cube’s sides: lynching, mass incarceration, death by police, and capital punishment.
