IHME Helsinki 2025

Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids. Photo: Samy Kramer.

Zhanna Kadyrova: The Forest

IHME Helsinki Commission 2025 is to be made by the Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova (b. 1981). Kadyrova’s site- and situation-specific works include sculpture, photography, video and performance. In IHME Helsinki Commission 2025 she focuses on water bodies and energy infrastructures, through which she explores the effects of both “progress” and conflict on life-support systems. Also present is the hope that arises from the ability of other ecosystems to sustain life.

Kadyrova’s IHME Helsinki Commission 2025 is a video installation The Forest that will open to the public on Ukrainian Independence Day, Sunday, 24 August 2025 in the Steam Power Plant at the Power Station Museum (Voimalamuseo, Hämeentie 163, Helsinki). The exhibition runs for six weeks until 2 October 2025.

IHME Helsinki Commission 2025 by Zhanna Kadyrova

The background material for IHME Helsinki 2025 is a video work, featuring a boundless young forest swaying in whirlwinds. The Kahovka dam, destroyed by Russia in June 6, 2023, drained a huge 2155 km² reservoir and caused untold devastation in the surrounding area, villages and towns. Simultaneously, the area’s precious cultural heritage was destroyed. The area is now covered by a four-metre-high willow and poplar forest. From 1876 to 1980, Finland’s first waterworks operated on Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids, the birthplace of the city of Helsinki. This has had a profound impact on the area’s surroundings. Today, it is home to the Museum of Technology and the Voimala Museum. Following nature values, the City of Helsinki is now exploring the possibility of dismantling the dam that holds back the Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids.

Zhanna Kadyrova’s IHME Helsinki Commission 2025 will bring these events in Ukraine and Helsinki for the public to contemplate. At the same time the work provides a hopeful respite from the conflict and environmental crisis. In line with IHME Helsinki’s international and ecologically sustainable operations, Kadyrova’s work is present not only in Helsinki, but also in her home country of Ukraine, as a local production for a local audience.

Image of Zhanna Kadyrova. A dark haired woman wearing black clothes and sitting on a rock by a river. — Zhanna Kadyrova. Photo: Elias Jurvanen.

Read more about the artist

“I first saw Zhanna Kadyrova’s work at the 2019 Venice Biennale, curated by Ralph Rugoff under the title May You Live In Interesting Times. This English expression refers to periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil – “interesting times” – exactly the kind we live in today. Zhanna showed two site-specific installations, Second Hand (2014) and Market (2016-). In Second Hand she had used waste material from buildings that had been abandoned or were under repair, conceptually linking them to the urban environment and public spaces. I was fascinated by these objects that so skillfully crystallized personal and public, psychological and political histories.

“Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, which began in 2022, has had a profound impact on Finland and the whole of Europe. As a result of the invasion, Finland has, for instance, joined NATO, accelerated its green transition in energy and electricity production, and taken in 45,000 Ukrainian refugees. The environmental crisis is causing suffering and destruction similar to those caused by wars, as a result of floods, forest fires, droughts, etc. triggered by extreme weather conditions. In the same way that we have to know how to mitigate climate change and how to adapt, we have to work for peace in Ukraine, but also in other conflict zones. In the field of art, we can create and strengthen connections, collaborations and actions for peace.

“In recent years, when giving talks about ecologically sustainable art institutions, I have often quoted the American feminist theorist and technology researcher Donna Haraway’s phrase “staying with the trouble” as a guide to living in a world of environmental crisis. According to Haraway, “staying with the trouble” means that we need each other in unexpected, interspecies collaborations and combinations. “We survive together or not at all,” she says. This is true for both interpersonal and interspecies coexistence.

“When I invited Zhanna Kadyrova to devise IHME Helsinki Commission 2025, I suggested to her that we consider the possibility of studying the effects of war not only on people and man-made infrastructures, but also on what happens in the natural environment, ecosystems and the lives of other species. Since returning to Kyiv, Zhanna has regularly wanted to see the devastation caused by the war with her own eyes and so, she has also visited the area affected by the bursting of the Kahovka dam, which was destroyed by Russia. Thus, the outline of a new work began to take shape around the history and present of two bodies of water and the two dams.”

Paula Toppila, Curator of IHME Helsinki Commission 2025

IHME Helsinki produces one public art work per year. The artist for 2025 was selected by the IHME Helsinki Advisory Board, led by Executive Director, Curator Paula Toppila. At the time of the selection in 2023, the expert working group included Professor Ute Meta Bauer from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, researcher and artist Antti Majava from the BIOS Research Unit, and Hanna Guttorm, Senior Researcher in Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki.

Zhanna Kadyrova was born in Brovary, in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, in 1981. She now lives and works in Kyiv. She was a member of the “R.E.P.” group (Revolution Experimental Space) in 2004–2014. After graduating from the Taras Shevchenko State Art School in 1999, she received the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award and the Grand Prix of the Kyiv Sculpture Project (both 2012). She was awarded the PinchukArtCentre’s Special Prize (2011), Main Prize (2013) and Special Prize – Future Generation Art Prize (2014).

Kadyrova has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including: the 2023 edition of the Kochi Biennale (India); the 3rd Bangkok Biennale (2022); the 58th, 56th (international projects) and 55th (Ukraine Pavilion) Venice Biennales; the 2017 Kyiv Biennale; and “CrackUpCrackDown”, the 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In recent years she has focused on site-specific projects, including an outdoor installation in the Semmering Mountains (Austria), an intervention and permanent sculpture in the village of Tolfa (Italy), and a sculptural project for the Shanghai Jing’an International Sculpture Project (JISP) in Shanghai (China).

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at: Kunstverein Hannover (Germany); Stavanger Museum (Norway); Kunstforum Wien (Austria); Eretz Istael Museum Tel Aviv (Israel); Centre Pompidou, Palais Tokyo and La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (all in France); Kunstraum Innsbruck (Austria); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (Hungary); Museum of Modern Art and Uyazdovski Castle, Warsaw (both in Poland); Spinnerei Leipzig, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, and DAAD, Zimmerstraße, Berlin (all in Germany); the National Union of Cuban Architects and Construction Engineers, Havana (Cuba); Sara Hildén Museum, Tampere (Finland); Lviv Municipal Art Center, Lviv, National Art Museum of Ukraine, and PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (all in Ukraine).

Galleria Continua represents Zhanna Kadyrova’s work and they have produced this text.

Zhanna Kadyrova’s art was shown in Finland in the Still still life exhibition at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in 2020. It included her installation Market (2017–19).

kadyrova.com

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kadyrova suspended her ongoing art projects, cancelled residencies, and rethought her artistic practice. She fled to the Carpathian Mountains, but realised that flight was not her solution and returned to her hometown of Kyiv a few months later. The Carpathians were, however, the birthplace of one of Kadyrova’s most famous series of works, PALIANYTSIA. This is a humanitarian artwork, and the proceeds from sales will be donated for the defence of Ukraine, to projects of Kadyrova’s choice in Ukraine. IHME Helsinki showed PALIANYTSIA at the Climate Security Festival at the Finnish Meteorological Institute on September 19–20, 2024 and at the Museum of Technology from October 29 to November 3, 2024.

“Palianytsia means bread. In a classical sense, it means a large, round wheat loaf baked in an oven. At the start of the war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine, the word “palianytsia” became a symbol, since Russian occupiers are unable to pronounce it correctly. It became a shibboleth, infallibly distinguishing friend from enemy. In addition to conventional troops, Russia sent groups of saboteurs to Ukrainian cities in advance of the invasion. The saboteurs’ task was to spy, inform Russia about where our armed forces were stationed, and where checkpoints and infrastructure facilities were located. They also left identifying marks to help aviation and landing forces navigate, and so on. These people moved around cities in civilian clothes, but were armed. The Palianytsia project was inspired by the Transcarpathian region, where my co-author Denis Ruban and I now live. At the start of the second week of the war, our whole family was forced to leave our hometown, Kyiv. My mother, sister and aunt are now in Germany, where we continue to live and hope to return. The villages here are protected by the Carpathian Mountains and there are many mountain rivers – their waters run fast and polish the stones. There are no strategic sites, such as airfields, military bases or weapons depots, here, so we think we are safe. Even though sometimes air-raid sirens sound. Upon arrival, we stayed in an overcrowded, expensive hotel in the regional centre. Trying to find our own place, we walked and travelled a lot around the area, and that was when we noticed the river stones. We started to look at them more closely and the idea just came to us. There was no time for distancing and analysis, just a growing need to do something and be useful! At the moment, there are about 6.5 million internally displaced persons in western Ukraine, so finding a place, especially one with a workshop, was incredibly difficult.

On the fifth day of our search, we succeeded! We found a detached house with no utilities, not even electricity, because a tree fell seven years ago and broke the wires. Together with the owners, we started organizing everything from scratch. Now we have electricity, Internet, a refrigerator and a microwave oven, firewood for cooking and heating the house, and water from a well. Most importantly, we can work. Being able to work on the project really helps us stay sane, because we feel that we are doing everything we can. We donate 100% of the money we receive for these artworks to volunteer organizations, and to friends who stayed in Kyiv and joined the Territorial Defense forces there. For the first two weeks of the war, it seemed to me that art was a dream, that all twenty years of my professional life were just something I had seen while asleep, that art was absolutely powerless and ephemeral in comparison to the merciless military machine destroying peaceful cities and human lives. Now, I no longer think so: I see that every artistic gesture makes us visible and makes our voices heard!”

Zhanna Kadyrova, 2022

Check out the work: kadyrova.com