This story was updated on Sept. 2.

Visitors to the National Mall this week will see a cage-like art installation standing among the white stone monuments and landmark museums.

A team of local Black architects from SmithGroup, an architecture firm, designed the installation following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. They named it “Society’s Cage,” in reference to the state violence and institutional racism that shape Black life in the United States today.

“We wanted to contribute to the conversation in our society, and even in our profession,” said principal architect Dayton Schroeter. “‘Society’s Cage’ attempts to contextualize these murders within 400 years of state violence in America.”

To do so, the piece uses nearly 500 weathered steel bars to represent data on racial imbalances.

The bars are of various lengths and hang in the shape of a cube. A quarter of the rods reach all the way to the ground, the artists’ representation of grim statistics regarding the likelihood a Black American will be incarcerated.

The empty void created by the other, shorter rods is meant to represent the “obstacle-filled path” Black Americans must navigate in order to survive, Schroeter said. The architects determined the length of the bars by mapping data related to lynching, death by police, capital punishment and mass incarceration.

“Anyone who takes fault with it is actually in disagreement with the facts,” Schroeter said. “It’s a fact-based installation.”

Inside the cage, a soundscape by two New Orleans-based musicians plays on loop. Each segment of the four-part composition runs for eight minutes and forty-six seconds — the amount of time a police officer kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck.

Visitors are invited to stand inside the installation and hold their breath for as long as possible, then post a video on social media discussing how it made them feel.

The installation opened on Friday to coincide with the 2020 March on Washington. Julian Arrington, one of the architects on the design team, spent the day watching protesters and passersby interact with the installation.

“It was pretty heavy,” Arrington said. “I try not to get too emotional, but I’ve seen people in tears, and I’ve seen people who were sort of resistant to go inside.”

He also saw a group of local police officers stop and look at the installation. “It was pretty powerful to see them take the time to take the information in,” he said, “and not walk away at first glance.”

“Society’s Cage” will be on the Mall through Saturday, Sept. 12. The designers say they hope to find a more permanent location for it as soon as possible.

This story was updated to reflect the exhibition’s new closure date of Sept. 12.