Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Abstract

Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Helsinki April 19-September 1, 2013 Finnish artist Eija Liisa Ahtila is best known for her multi-panel video installations. Her work has been exhibited at prominent galleries and museums worldwide, including London's Tate Modern, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Parallel Worlds, an exhibition at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, looked back at selected works from 1993 to 2011. In Horizontal (2011), Ahtila's desire to create a portrait of a spruce tree on film reveals the biases inherent in the medium. A tall tree cannot fit inside the frame unless one turns the camera sideways and moves back far enough that the focus is no longer just note tree but an entire landscape. Aluila's project demonstrates that the camera is not a neutral recording device but an anthropocentric one, designed around a restricted set of subjects and viewing positions. In order to capture the tree as close to life size as possible. Ahtila filmed it horizontally, dividing it into six separate segments. All six films were projected simultaneously, in series, but turned on one side, so that the tree appeared horizontally along the wall of the gallery. In an adjoining room, a series of pastel drawings, Anthropominpltic Exercises on Film (2011), playfully explored possible transformations imposed by a human perspective: two spruces sit down for coffee, while another spruce takes the shape of a cowboy in a shoot-out. Some drawings incorporated mirrors so that viewers could place themselves in relation to the tree: in front of one of the sketches, there was a head step for the viewer to stand in it hi see his or her own head crowning the tree's body. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The House (2002) and its accompanying sculptures also offered viewers a chance to experience alternative points of view. In a three-panel video installation, a young woman walks around her house and, in voiceover on the soundtrack, talks about her everyday life within its walls. The multiple panels give a more immersive experience of each room than could a single screen. Gradually, the character begins to describe hearing sounds and voices that aren't there. The script is based on the artist's interviews with women who have actually experienced psychosis; it is vivid and unsettling but steers clear of stereotype and sensationalism. The multiple panels help to reproduce the character's experience through disjunction: while the three screens provide a relatively broad perspective, we do not have a complete view of any room and begin to feel threatened by blind spots. In addition to the character's own actions expressing her fear and disorientation, objects and animals embody the sounds she is hearing: a cow finds its way into the house, and a miniature car drives across her living room walls. …