Eija-Liisa Ahtila
On Breathing
1-Channel monitor/projected installation
2025 | 9 min 23 sec | 4K | 16:9 | Audio 2.1

On some early mornings after summer,
when the sea is still warm but the nights are cold,
a fog rises from the sea and envelops the neighborhood.

It calms the area and gently alters visibility,
making things nearby detach from their backgrounds,
emphasizing their closeness and presence.

The air around the oak tree seems tangible,
and the space inside it becomes actual,
as if the breathing of the tree
were, for a moment, perceivable.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS BY EIJA-LIISA AHTILA

HORIZONTAL – Otherlands, MMCA, Gwacheon, South Korea,
Sep 10, 2024 - Mar 30, 2025
CASTING PORTRAITS – Soulmates, STDLK Museum, Breda,
The Netherlands, Oct 1, 2024 – Mar 9, 2025
HORIZONTAL – The Third Hand, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden,
Feb 24, 2024 - Jan 12, 2025
APRIL – Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Holland, Mar 24 - Sep 15, 2024
ME/WE, OKAY, GRAY – Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France,
Sep 22, 2023 - Jan 7, 2024
HORIZONTAL – Connect Me, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art and Design, 
Kolding, Denmark, Sep 24, 2022 - Aug 13, 2023 
FISHERMEN – Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, Denmark, Jan 17 – May 17, 2023
ANTHROPOMORPHIC EXERCISES ON FILM –  Gösta, Serlachius Museums, 
Mänttä, Finland, Nov 5, 2022 – Apr 16, 2023
THE HOUSE – Face-a-Face, Mudam, Luxemburg, Oct 8, 2022 - Apr 2, 2023
HORIZONTAL – Gardenroom, Voorlinden Museum & Gardens, Wassenaar, 
The Netherlands, Nov 19, 2022 – Jan 31, 2023
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – Future Cities, Daejeon Art and Science Biennale,
Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea, Aug 2 - Oct 30, 2022
IF 6 WAS 9 – Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, Apr 9 - Sep 11, 2022
HORIZONTAL – World Living Soils Forum, La Grande Halle, Arles, France, 
May 22 – Jun 2, 2022
THE ANNUNCIATION, THE BRIDGE – Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, USA, 
Jan 27 - May 7, 2022
CASTING PORTRAITS – Images of Humanity, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 
Germany Oct 30, 2021 - Apr 10, 2022
HORIZONTAL – Ars Fennica, Hämeenlinna Museum, Hämeenlinna, Finland, 
Oct 15, 2021 - Mar 3, 2022
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – Diversity United, New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 
Russia, Nov 22, 2021 - (Mar 9, 2022), CLOSED Feb 24, 2022
IF 6 WAS 9 – Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Oct 23, 2021 - Feb 20, 2022
HORIZONTAL – Lichtsicht Triennale, Bad Rothenfelde, Germany,
Oct 22, 2021 - Feb 20, 2022

More exhibitions

APRIL ≈ 61°01' 24°27'
(2024) is a 8–channel (vertically) projected installation with audio 8.0

APRIL is a multi-channel moving image installation that reflects upon the spatiality of an area of a forest by projecting it onto a rectangular wall, a human structure.

The theme of APRIL is the spatiality of being and the constant change that is its fundamental quality. The source of the work is life in a forest where each singular being is an integrated element of the whole. The work was shot in a conservation area where the forest is allowed to exist without human intervention.

APRIL was shot in the course of two years,  appr between the end of March and end of May, and it covers the passage from winter to summer. In the beginning, the image at left still shows snow covering the ground, at right it is already summer. The work is a part of a longer project that explores the possibilities of ecological narration in moving image, and of moving away from the anthropocentric world views.

The base of APRIL is the location and its nature and the way it presents itself. APRIL draws upon its light situations and spatial changes, its transitions and circumstances, its passage of time, its configuration of living beings and perceptions of movement.

More

ROUTEMASTER by ILPPO POHJOLA
Luminor-Hôtel de Ville, Paris, France, Nov 14, 2023
Collectif Jeune Cinema, Paris, France, Oct 11, 2023 

LOVE IS A TREASURE – EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, July 9 & 11, 2023

RETROSPECTIVE – EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Kino Regina, Finnish Film Archive, Helsinki, Mar 30 - May 11, 2022
STUDIES ON THE ECOLOGY OF DRAMA, THE ANNUNCIATION, THE HOUR OF PRAYER, LOVE IS A TREASURE, CONSOLATION SERVICE, TODAY, IF 6 WAS 9, ME/WE, OKAY, GRAY

P(L)AIN TRUTH by ILPPO POHJOLA
Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia, Apr 26 - 30, 2022
Vinokino Festival Tour: Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Helsinki, Joensuu, Finland, 
Oct 22 - Dec 5, 2021

DADDY AND THE MUSCLE ACADEMY by ILPPO POHJOLA
Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland, April 29, June 2 and Sep 1, 2023
Fotografiska New York, NY, USA, Jun 16, 2021
Tom of Finland 100 Years Celebration, London, UK, May 9, 2020 –Cancelled
Queer Lisboa - International Queer Film Festival, Portugal, Sep 20 - 28, 2019
Films4fags, Tom of Finland House, Los Angeles, California, USA, Aug 17, 2019
Berlin International Film Festival, Germany, Feb 7 - 17, 2019

More screenings

HORIZONTAL is a six-channel moving portrait of a living spruce tree.
The attempt to film a spruce tree brings the portrayer face to face with the technical apparatus constructed as an extension of the human eye and perception. It also invites us to consider the preconditions of anthropocentric dramaturgy and the valuations it engenders in images and in the order of representation. It is a record of its existence as a living organism, or perhaps more to the point, a presentation of the difficulty of perceiving and recording a spruce tree with the methods of visual documentation invented by humans.

HORIZONTAL is always adjusted to the current exhibition space… constructed by human beings.

Stills: Hayward Gallery, London;
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul;
Salon Dahlman, Berlin;
Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City;
Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg;
Lichtsicht Triennale, Bad Rothenfelde.

FRANCESCA WOODMAN & EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
On Visuality and the Presentation of Emotions in the Space of Media Art

The phenomenological encounter with the works of the American photographer Francesca Woodman and the Finnish video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila forms the focus of the publication. The relationship between the body and space is explored in the context of perception and emotion, making use of theories of embodiment as well as recent research in emotion studies.

DADDY AND THE MUSCLE ACADEMY ON BLURAY IN USA & CANADA

Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber has released digitally restored and remastered version of Daddy and the Muscle Academy by Ilppo Pohjola on BluRay in the US and Canada.

"Tom of Finland is one of the major icons of the gay world. Taking inspiration from his World War II army days, 1950s American bodybuilding magazines and biker movies, Tom’s erotic drawings of uniformed and leather-clad beefcake have become a permanent fixture of 20th-century iconography. 

Completed shortly before his death in 1991, Daddy and the Muscle Academy: The Life, Art and Times of Tom of Finland is the definitive, ground-breaking documentary of the man and the artist. Newly restored from the original camera negative, it combines interviews with Tom himself, commentary from his “leather men”, hundreds of original drawings, and fantasy scenes inspired by his work."

RETROSPECTIVE CATALOGUE OF AHTILA’S WORKS IN SPANISH

On the occasion of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s major retrospective in Spain, MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of A Coruña is publishing together with DARDO, the first Spanish language catalogue by Eija-Liisa Ahtila, presenting a cross section of her work.

The catalogue spans over 200 pages of museum views of installed works, photographic works, film stills and screen captures. The catalogue features a previously unpublished text by art historian Hanna Johansson The Temporal and Ecological Sphere of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Film and The Moving Image as Witness by author Mieke Bal. Studies on the Ecology of Drama, Horizontal, Anthropomorphic Exercises on Film, The Annunciation, The House, Today and Dog Bites have been photographed at MAC and these never seen photographs are included, together with views from other shows by the artist.

ECOLOGIES OF DRAMA – TEXT ANTHOLOGY PUBLISHED IN USA

Albright-Knox Art Gallery has published a 300-page anthology featuring texts on Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s moving image works. The anthology, titled "Eija-Liisa Ahtila: ECOLOGIES OF DRAMA – Collected Writings, Interviews, and Scripts", features a great variety of essays and conversational articles by various authors, as well as the synopses and scripts of all Ahtila’s moving image works.

The anthology is an excellent source book of Ahtila's works, and describes how she has been a groundbreaking artist since the beginning of the 1990s, pioneering in creating a new genre in contemporary art, the multi-channel moving image installation.

More Publications

POTENTIALITIES OF LOVE 
An extended, thematic book inspired by Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s sculptural installation.

Potentialities of Love reflects on themes central to Ahtila’s artistic practice. It expands on the visual approach of her thoughts, using her latest hybrid cinematic installation, Potentiality for Love as a starting point. 

It focuses on Otherness, Animal Lives, and Love/Compassion, and discusses how these three themes are interlinked. —1st part of the book is providing a brief sketch for a historical/philosophical background of the construction of the concept of the animal as the other. 2nd part discusses embodiedness and vulnerability, from the point of animals’ experience and biographies. 3rd part is returning to the theme of love and its connection with the other, and expands on the artist’s work in relation to an aesthetics of love.

These themes are central to Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s artistic thinking, especially as she has been engaging with animals’ experience and intersubjectivity between animals and humans. Creatureliness traverses all her work — how can the sense of creaturely exposure and mutual belongingness be evoked in moving image installations; is it possible for this sense to become a basis for an ethics of nonviolence?

Potentialities of Love is ’an intellectual art book’, which by using variety of image sources and contemporary graphics design approach —combined with high end print quality— elevates the book format to a level of an independent work of art.

AFTER EVERYTHING by PEKKA SASSI
An encounter with the unknown in extreme circumstances.

AFTER EVERYTHING tells a story of two boys in a world where brutality, inhumanity and killing an angel are commonplace and part of everyday routine. It leads to a situation in which brutality is victorious, yet beyond total destruction there is also room for a new beginning. 

The atmosphere of doom is emphasised by the combination of black-and-white footage, harsh settings and industrial noise music.

AFTER EVERYTHING is a melancholy song of destruction, yet there is hope even in its finality. It is a tragedy that dives so deep into darkness that one almost runs out of breath, but ultimately light is victorious, blinding and purifying.

Read more

STUDIES ON THE ECOLOGY OF DRAMA
“How to depict living things? How to approach them? How to convey a different way of being, another being's world? How to make it into a continuous event that becomes part of our idea of reality?”

4-channel projected moving image installation and single-channel film that uses the methods of presentation as a path to the company of other living beings. It expands upon the issues of ecological moving image narrative explored in her previous works – the focus in this work being on presentation, imaging and imagination in the context of the moving image.

Installation

Film

4K/2K DIGITAL RESTORATION PROJECT

Crystal Eye is remastering all existing works, installations and films by Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Ilppo Pohjola. Detailed digital restoration is executed from the original camera and laboratory negatives and the original audio sources to reach maximum image and audio quality – without losing artist's original intention and the film look.