Hiwa K: Chicago Boys—While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming
The Kurdish artist and musician Hiwa K is to make a Helsinki version of his Chicago Boys—While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming in the spring of 2023. This brings together people from different backgrounds, everyday experiences of neoliberalism, the environmental crisis, and popular music. The work was first realized at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2010 and has since toured many of the world’s leading art institutions. At its core is a group of people who form both an amateur band and a neoliberalism study group. An open call for participants will be announced in January 2023.
Hiwa K got his basic education in Iraq and continued independent studies by meeting thinkers, visual artists, musicians and theatre makers. After moving to Germany at the age of 25, he studied music under flamenco master Paco Peña. Three years ago, Hiwa K returned to Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan. There, he has acquired a farm and with local people studies how to promote permaculture, i.e. how to live in harmony with the environment. His way of being an artist is reflected in continual criticism of the art-education system, professionally defined art practices, and the artist myth.
“I realized that we must give up our position as artists, in the sense that we produce goods and maintain a market that requires a certain overproduction. What we do is also very unecological. We have caused too much destruction. We should be more of a nurse, and that’s what I do,” says Hiwa K about his principles as an artist.
“We chose Hiwa K to be the artist of the next commissioned work because he shares values with IHME Helsinki: ecological and social sustainability; experiencing and doing things together; and encouraging and creating change. Chicago Boys offers people an opportunity to get together to share stories exploring the globalization process and its impact on our daily culture through songs. Besides the core study group, the public, too, can participate in band rehearsals,” says Paula Toppila, Executive Director of IHME Helsinki, who plans to dig her own guitar out of its case after a decades-long hiatus.
Hiwa K’s IHME Helsinki 2023 Commission will take place almost simultaneously in Helsinki and Sulaymaniyah in April-May 2023. Our Helsinki partner is Stoa Cultural Centre in Itäkeskus.
IHME Helsinki
IHME Helsinki commissions works of contemporary art that unite the worlds of art, science and climate work. IHME’s core activity is the annual staging of a new artwork, together with an artist and Finnish and foreign partners, in public space in Finland and abroad. We combine the worlds of art and science to create a vision of our planet’s crisis of sustainability while increasing hope.
The artists of IHME Helsinki Commissions are selected by the IHME Helsinki Advisory Board, which, at the time of Hiwa K’s selection, included, besides Toppila in the chair, Professor Ute Meta Bauer (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), researcher and artist Antti Majava (BIOS research unit, Helsinki), Professor Jussi Parikka (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Dean Hanna Johansson (Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts). In June 2022, Hanna Johansson’s term ended and Senior Researcher Hanna Guttorm (University of Helsinki) was invited to replace her.
In 2020–22, our work is being made possible by support from our founding body Pro Arte Foundation Finland, along with Kone Foundation and Saastamoinen Foundation. In 2023–2025, we are being supported by the Saastamoinen Foundation, Kone Foundation and the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation.
