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IHME Helsinki 2025: The Forest – Diverse and Touching Experiences
The Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova’s IHME Helsinki Commission 2025, The Forest, was at the Vanhankaupunginkoski (Old Town Rapids) Power Plant Museum from 24 August to 2 October 2025. The exhibition was seen by 2155 visitors over the six weeks. It offered visitors diverse experiences and multiple layers of meanings.
In the Commission Kadyrova combined documentary video material and camera-obscura images of the Kakhovka forest with archival footage from the Dovzhenko Centre’s film archive. The material dealt with the history of the area submerged under the Kakhovka Reservoir, the construction of the dam, its destruction, and the resulting consequences for people and the environment in Russia’s war of aggression. The videos and images follow a boat drifting amid the four-metre willow and poplar forest that grew up in place of the reservoir, at different times of day and year.
Feedback was collected during the exhibition on paper and digital forms, as well as in discussions with visitors. On Monday, 29 September, a feedback discussion was held with six participants. Judging from the feedback and conversations, the artwork caused visitors to pause and process the materials in depth.
The Agency of Ukrainian People and Nature
The feedback described The Forest as arresting, awakening, and touching; powerful, impactful, and necessary; multifaceted, quiet, and difficult; moving, beautiful, and important. Many comments emphasized how it provided new insights into Ukrainian history, the effects on the area of the Kakhovka Dam’s construction and destruction, and especially the environmental impacts of the war. As one piece of feedback said:
Arresting, moving. I hadn’t realized how the Soviet Union destroyed important history. Nor had I understood how massive an ecocatastrophe the dam explosion was.
The multi-layered material in the artwork helped people grasp how complex the restoration and recovery of ecosystems are, and how humans influence these processes – for better or worse.
For Ukrainian visitors the work was an important sign that people care about Ukraine and Ukrainians – that they and the effects of the war have not been forgotten. The exhibition highlighted the agency of Ukrainians in the midst of war and showed how nature can respond to human-caused destruction.
It’s important for the Ukrainian community here to see attention to the war in Ukraine & its injustices. The work is strong & multidimensional, big thank you to the artist.
Depending on visitor’s personal relationship and experiences of the war, the materials could also bring traumatic memories to the surface. The sounds of wind and distant air-raid sirens in the soundscape created a challenging situation for those who had experienced war. Content warnings about the sounds and imagery would have been appreciated. Nevertheless, the experience as a whole was described as meaningful and important.
An Invitation to Focus, Pause, and Process
In particular, in the feedback discussion The Forest was described as demanding and difficult – which was seen as a good thing. In contrast to today’s maximum-30-second video feeds and shortened attention spans, the information presented on the oval table around the Power Plant’s turbine required visitors to stop, focus, read, and process the content.
The soundscape, video, image, and text materials, as well as the colour scheme of the space, were described as monotonous. The lack of strong contrasts, however, supported immersion in the artwork. The feeling of quietness that participants mentioned was associated with the sort of meditative space that the installation created, even though there were lots of sounds there. Visitors felt compelled to delve into the material, to process it alone, and to form their own understanding of the whole thing.
Similarly, the written feedback mentioned that the work inspired new thoughts and allowed room for personal reflection:
Very sad, but very strong, it gives a nice holistic overview on the situation, but keeps the space for personal analysis.
A Gentle, Ethical Space for an Encounter
The documentary materials on the construction and destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, on volunteers’ activities and mutual support, and on people’s humour amid catastrophe evoked a wide range of emotions – from sorrow and anger to hope and empowerment. While The Forest could elicit difficult feelings, this added to its meaningfulness and impact. For Ukrainian participants it was also important to be able to articulate their experience.
Overall, the Commission was spoken about as documentation and the artist as a witness to events. The fact that the exhibition contained a lot of factual information with no attempt to manipulate the viewer into a specific interpretation was perceived as a gentle, ethical form of presentation. As one discussant put it:
It just spills out facts, and it builds a narrative that you do when you go [around] the circle, which I really like. You don’t need all the other sounds, although there is sound.
The artwork also offered visitors new perspectives on the site-specific nature of art and its ability to manifest tragedy. By addressing the destruction of the dam and its consequences through diverse sources of knowledge, Kadyrova provided new meanings for the catastrophe. The feedback highlighted the interaction between humans and nature and, in particular, nature’s power to transform and recover even in challenging conditions.
One visitor remarked:
This aspect of nature (always) gets a smaller role, one overlooked in things like war. Except now!
Ultimately, people hoped that nature would prevail and that the forest would be left in peace – as a monument to what was lost.
For those who took part in the discussion, sharing experiences brought significant added value to the artwork: it added to their understanding of how differently the piece could be experienced depending on the viewer’s background and relationship to the war. Thus, The Forest was also seen as an opportunity to encounter other people and to engage in dialogue about the war and its effects on people and the environment.
Writer: Saara Moisio
Translated with the help of ChatGPT, revised by MG.
