IHME Helsinki Commission 2022 begins and will last until the beginning of May

Indian artist Amar Kanwar’s IHME Helsinki 2022 Commission entitled Learning from Doubt is a ten-week online course. The course is based on Amar Kanwar’s The Sovereign Forest art installation and exhibition. It will begin with an online meeting on 15th February, and conclude on 3rd May, with Kanwar in Helsinki. His films will also be screened at the Bio Rex cinema, Lasipalatsi on May 4th. IHME Helsinki has the great honor to show the works of the award-winning artist for the first time in Finland.

Participants from all over the country

The Learning from Doubt course was open for registration until January 9th. To date, more than a hundred people from all over Finland have registered for the course. IHME Helsinki’s partners, Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki and Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science of the University of Helsinki, had their own application process. As a result of the search, a total of forty-two art and sustainability students will participate in the course. They work on the course assignments as a multidisciplinary collaboration.

A work of art is a course is a work of art

The Sovereign Forest is an art project that has been ongoing since 2009 and has been evolving, expanding and experimenting with different forms and presentations. The Sovereign Forest attempts to initiate a creative response to our understanding of crime, politics, human rights, and ecology. The validity of poetry as evidence in a trial, the discourse on seeing, on compassion, justice, and the determination of the self – all come together in a constellation of films, texts, books, photographs, seeds and processes. The Sovereign Forest has overlapping identities. It continuously reincarnates as an art installation, an exhibition, a library, a memorial, a public trial, an open call for the collection of more “evidence”, an archive and now a school. It is also a proposal for a common space that reflects on education, politics and the arts.

The Sovereign Forest has been made in collaboration with Samadrusti/Sudhir Pattnaik and Sherna Dastur. Samadrusti is a fortnightly Odia political and social news magazine, Sudhir Pattnaik is the editor of Samadrusti and a social activist. Sherna Dastur is a graphic designer and filmmaker based in Delhi.

Reporting and analysis of the course coming

IHME Helsinki’s communication trainee Eero Karjalainen will report on the progress of the course on IHME Helsinki channels. In addition, IHME Helsinki author Joonas Pulkkinen will write an analytical review of the entire course at the end of the course.

Read more about the artist and IHME Helsinki 2022 >>