Saastamoinen Foundation and Kone Foundation will be supporting IHME Helsinki’s work in 2023-25

The contemporary-art organization IHME Helsinki is pleased to announce that Kone Foundation and Saastamoinen Foundation have decided to support IHME Helsinki’s operations in 2023-25.

IHME Helsinki is a contemporary-art-commissioning body that combines art, science and climate work. Its core value is the freedom of art within the framework of life-supporting systems. It aims to promote eco-social education, a sustainable, democratic society, and a diverse good life. IHME has been boldly producing new, previously unseen art for a variety of audiences for fifteen years.

“We greatly appreciate the confidence in what we do shown by Saastamoinen Foundation and Kone Foundation. This support makes possible the work of international artists and the production of a new work in Finland each year, thus providing important content on ecological and social sustainability for mutual reflection and debate. We will also continue to share what we have learned about sustainable operating models in the field of art both in Finland and abroad. Art and art institutions have an important role to play in the sustainability transformation,” says Paula Toppila, Executive Director, Curator of IHME Helsinki.

Common values

“IHME Helsinki does significant pioneering work on a sustainable value base. It is important for Saastamoinen Foundation to support activities that combine art, science and climate work,” says Päivi Karttunen, Chair of Saastamoinen Foundation’s Art Committee.

“In Kone Foundation’s vision, academic and artistic freedom thrive in an ecologically sustainable and socially equal Finland. IHME Helsinki promotes many of the same goals and values as Kone Foundation. Our foundation also encourages the crossing of boundaries and hence it is great to be able to support IHME Helsinki’s contemporary art projects where art and research meet, and which are carried out in an environmentally responsible way,” says Ulla Tuomarla, Executive Director of Kone Foundation.

IHME Helsinki Commissions are conceived once a year

Like IHME Helsinki‘s predecessor, the IHME Contemporary Art Festival (2009-2018), the core of its activities is a work of art in the public realm by an internationally recognized artist. The IHME Helsinki Commissions realized so far have been a spatial sound installation by Norwegian artist Jana Winderen and a set of events based on incense ceremonies by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. IHME Helsinki Commission 2022 is currently being created by award-winning Indian artist Amar Kanwar. His work is an online course Learning from Doubt, which is open to everyone and is being run in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of the Arts Helsinki and the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science of the University of Helsinki.

IHME Helsinki’s artists are selected by its Advisory Board, which includes Professor Ute Meta Bauer from Singapore’s Nanyang University of Technology, Dean Hanna Johansson from the University of the Arts Helsinki, artist and researcher Antti Majava from the BIOS Research Unit in Helsinki, and Professor Jussi Parikka from the University of Aarhus in Denmark and IHME’s Executive Director, Curator Paula Toppila as chair.

IHME Helsinki’s operations have been carbon neutral since 2020, requiring only minimal offsetting. Admission to all events produced by IHME Helsinki is free.