For her IHME Project 'True Finn' Yael Bartana invited people living in Finland to take part in creating an utopian moment. The condition was that each person has a different ethnic, religious and political background. As a result of an open call, eight Finnish-resident individuals came to live together for seven days in a house in the countryside. Life, discussions and specifically designed assignments were filmed, with the edited material now forming the core of this artwork. What happens when these people live together for a week and re-define Finnishness, and themselves in relation to others?

The film installation plays with questions about identity: How does national identity operate as a means of inclusion and exclusion? What mechanisms exist for this in Finland? What are we talking about when we talk about Finnish identity right now? Can an immigrant become a true Finn? With True Finn – the title is a play on the name of a rightwing populist party in Finland – the artist succeeds in creating a multilayered reflection on the theme of nationalism, which asks many questions but consistently avoids giving answers. And in this case she relies not on loud provocation but on sensitive, thoughtful chords. As such, the exhibition reveals two sides of Bartana’s work, the ultimate effect of which is something like two sides of the same coin.