President Tarja Halonen is patron of IHME Helsinki Commission 2025

President Tarja Halonen, a pioneer in international sustainability work and peace mediation, is the patron of Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova’s IHME Helsinki Commission 2025. The internationally acclaimed artist’s project, The Forest, examines the past, future, and natural regenerative capacity of the Kakhovka dam area in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, which was destroyed during Russia’s war of aggression. During her visit to Helsinki, Kadyrova became interested in the history and present of Vanhankaupunginkoski Rapids, and now The Forest will be shown in the Steam Power Plant at the Power Station Museum.

I am delighted to have been invited to be patron of IHME Helsinki Commission 2025. IHME Helsinki has long been a pioneer in sustainable practices in the visual arts and has shown how art can support the transition to sustainability by embedding sustainability measures in our everyday lives, for example, through last year’s Maaleipä Challenge. This year’s Commission shows the effects of Russia’s war of aggression in the area around the Kakhovka dam, which was destroyed in June 2023. Amid the devastation, our attention is drawn to the forest that grew within a year in place of the large reservoir that was emptied out by the attack. Showing Ukrainian art at this moment is not just a sign of support, but also a way of making Ukrainian culture and nature visible. Kadyrova’s artwork reminds us that nature – the systems that sustain life – enables human culture to flourish everywhere and that, ultimately, nature conservation, sustainability work, and peace work are all interconnected,

says President Halonen.

Zhanna Kadyrova (b. 1981) was awarded the Ukrainian State’s Shevchenko National Prize for visual arts in March 2025 and will represent Ukraine at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Her IHME Helsinki Commission 2025 will open to the public at the Power Station Museum in Helsinki on Ukraine’s Independence Day, 24 August 2025, and will be shown until 2 October 2025. In Ukraine the Commission was made possible by the city of Zaporizhzhia, the Khortytsia Museum, and the Dovzhenko Center film archive in Kyiv.