Eija-Liisa Ahtila

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS BY EIJA-LIISA AHTILA

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
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – Diversity United, New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 
Russia, Nov 22, 2021 - Mar 9, 2022
HORIZONTAL – Ars Fennica, Hämeenlinna Museum, Hämeenlinna, Finland, 
Oct 15, 2021 - Mar 3, 2022
HORIZONTAL – Lichtsicht Triennale, Bad Rothenfelde, Germany,
Oct 22, 2021 - Feb 20, 2022
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – National Gallery of Art, Vilnus, Lithuania, 
July 31 - Oct 3, 2021
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – Secrets of Alidades, The Saudi Art Council, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 4 – Sep 30, 2021 
HORIZONTAL – Finlayson Art Area, Tampere, Finland, June  18 - Aug 22, 2021
POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, May 12 - Aug 2, 2021
HORIZONTAL – Diversity United, Tempelhof Airport, Berlin, Germany,
May 4 - July 31, 2021  
HORIZONTAL – Lichtsicht Triennale, Bad Rothenfelde, Germany,
Oct 23, 2020 - Feb 21, 2021
HORIZONTAL – Among the Trees, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, UK, Mar 4 - Oct 31, 2020
THE HOUSE – Istanbul Billboard Project, Istanbul, Turkey, Oct 5 - 18, 2020
HORIZONTAL – Axis of Horizon, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, 
South Korea, May 6 - May 31, 2020

SCREENER SHOWS BY EIJA-LIISA AHTILA

IF 6 WAS 9 – Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, Mar 26 - Sep 4, 2022
IF 6 WAS 9 – Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Oct 23, 2021 - Feb 20, 2022
STUDIES ON THE ECOLOGY OF DRAMA – Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 
USA, Apr 24 - May 4, 2020
IF 6 WAS 9  – Helena Anrather Gallery, New York, USA, Apr 13 - May 13, 2020

More exhibitions

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.

CURRENT FILM SCREENINGS

RETROSPECTIVE – EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Suomalaisen elokuvan festivaali, Turku, Finland, Sep 23, 2021
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

STUDIES ON THE ECOLOGY OF DRAMA by EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Institut Finlandais, Paris, France, Nov 30, 2019

RETROSPECTIVE – EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Filmforum, Duisburg, Germany, Oct 10, 2019
THE ANNUNCIATION, THE HOUR OF PRAYER, TODAY, IF 6 WAS 9, ME/WE, OKAY, GRAY

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

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.

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.

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. The project will be finished by the end of this year.