Eija-Liisa Ahtila

REFLECTION OF A FOREST

In Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s installation the forest plays the central role. The number and size of projected images will vary to reflect the theme of each scene and the material contained in it.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS BY EIJA-LIISA AHTILA

HORIZONTAL – Kew Gardens, London, UK, Apr 12 - Sep 19, 2025
REFLECTION OF A FOREST – Serlachius Museums, Mänttä, Finland,
Dec 14, 2024 – Apr 27, 2025
HORIZONTAL – Otherlands, MMCA, National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea, Sep 10, 2024 - Mar 30, 2025
THE HOUSE – Homage to Older Women, Railroad posters, Copenhagen,
Denmark, Mar 3 – 16, 2024
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
ON BREATHING – Your Patience is Appreciated, Marian Goodman Gallery,
New York, USA, Oct 26 – Dec 19, 2024
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
HORIZONTAL – Ars Fennica, Hämeenlinna Museum, Hämeenlinna, Finland,
Oct 15, 2021 - Mar 3, 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

On Breathing

Eija-Liisa Ahtila
On Breathing
1-channel monitor / projected installation
2025 | 9 min 23 sec | 4K | 16:9 | Audio 2.0

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.

April ≈ 61°01' 24°27'

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.

HORIZONTAL – Spatial Adaptations

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.

FILM SCREENINGS

RECENT SCREENINGS

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

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

More screenings

Potentiality for Love

POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE (2018)
Moving image sculpture in 3 parts:
#1 – Angular video sculpture
#2 – Two research tables
#3 – Vertical single channel projection

POTENTIALITY FOR LOVE turns attention to those human emotions that could serve as a foundation for dismantling the hierarchical structures between living things, thereby engendering a turn towards non-humans and the recognition of others, with the potential for empathy and love.

Art and Science Biennale, Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea, 2022
New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, CLOSED Feb 24, 2022
National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2021
Secrets of Alidades, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2021
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, 2021
Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany, 2019
Serlachius Museums, Mänttä, 2018
M-Museum, Leuven, Belgium, 2018
Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2018
Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 2018

Studies on the Ecology of Drama

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

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

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

Vernissage Views

Some additional installation views, photos, snapshots and phonepics from Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s shows – before, during and after the opening itself.

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

RECENT AFFAIRS FROM THE ARCHIVES

A LIE NEEDS ONLY TO BE REPEATED
TEN TIMES TO BECOME TRUE
(English translation)

VALHE TARVITSEE...
by EIJA-LIISA AHTILA

1987 | Text installation on bulletin boards and stickers

INSTALLATIONS

Reflection of a Forest
On Breathing
April ≈ 61°01' 24°27'
Potentiality for Love
Studies on the Ecology of Drama
Horizontal
The Annunciation
Where is Where?
Fishermen / Études N°1
The Hour of Prayer
The Wind
The House
The Present
Consolation Service
Anne, Aki and God
Today
If 6 Was 9
Me/We, Okay, Gray

drawings

Anthropomorphic Exercises On Film

FILMS

Studies on the Ecology of Drama
The Annunciation
Where is Where?
The Hour of Prayer
Love is a Treasure
Consolation Service
Today
If 6 Was 9
Me/We, Okay, Gray

Photo Series

Horizontal
Instruments
Scenographer's Mind
Assistant Series
Casting Portraits
Dog Bites

Projects

The Bridge
Horizontal
Companions
The House
Ground Control
Veil of Ignorance

Sculptures

The Clear House
The Pool House
The Shade House
The Tent House

Eija-Liisa Ahtila is a contemporary visual artist and filmmaker. She experiments with narrative storytelling in her films and cinematic installations. In her earlier works she has dealt with the unsettling human dramas at the centre of personal relationships, dealing e.g. with teenage sexuality, family relations, mental disintegration and death. Her later works deal with profound and basic artistic questions where she investigates the processes of perception and attribution of meaning, at times in the light of a larger cultural and existential thematic like colonialism, faith and posthumanism.

Since the beginning of the century Ahtila has gradually begun to work with an ecological point of view in narration with her multi-screen installations. The human affected change in the planetary conditions has led her to question the anthropocentrism of the images created of our planet and the apparatus of film that generates them. In her more recent works the focus has been to disengage the moving image narration from anthropocentrism and to achieve a corresponding shift in expression. For example, she has proposed the role of a protagonist to other living beings, that also leading to the notion of acting to be adjusted to fit the context. - In order to construct different images and viewpoints, the location, the living entity that is to be filmed, needs to be approached differently. To forget the idea and the hierarchy of a centre and its surroundings, one needs a different kind of working method that enables the creation of the experience of a shared space and relations between the living beings.