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 artwork 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?
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