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27/1/2003

Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Two Venues, Amsterdam and Sittard

Eija-Liisa Ahtila tells tales of broken relationships and personal loss of things that drive people apart, and into desperation. Often based on everyday reality, her works are narratives about seemingly normal people which unfold before the spectator in time and space. But the main characters in nearly all Ahtila’s work have visions. They inhabit the boundary between reality and fantasy, and find it difficult to keep their disturbed inner life under control.

The exhibition in De Appel consists of video installations and photographic works. It is the first major review of her work in the Netherlands, and includes a number of important works from the last ten years.

Me/We - Okay, Gray (1993), is a set of three short films originally made for Finnish TV. With their lively dialogues and rapid succession of images, these mini-dramas resemble commercials. However, the subject matter of personal and collective traumas undermines the promotional genre.

In If 6 was 9 (1995), a group of adolescent girls reconnoitre female fantasies of lust and sexuality. On the frontier of adulthood, these teenagers are poised between childhood and maturity.

Today (1996-1997), consisting both of a video installation projected on three screens and a 35 mm film, tells the story of a family in the aftermath of a terrible accident.

The Wind (2002), a video triptych, presents a penetrating portrait of a woman suffering from bouts of depression and occasionally psychosis. The work depicts the gradual emergence of insanity and the woman’s deteriorating communications with the outside world.

Born in Finland in 1959, Eija Liisa Ahtila grew up in Hämeenlinna and now lives and works in Helsinki. Ahtila studied law at the University of Helsinki and film at UCLA, Los Angeles, and The London College of Printing. Her work has been shown in contexts and events such as Organising Freedom, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2000), Cinema Cinema, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1999), End of Story, Venice Biennale (1999), Real Characters, Invented Worlds, Tate Modern, London (2002), and Documenta 11, Kassel (2002). Eija-Liisa Ahtila won the Vincent van Gogh Bi-annual Award for Contemporary Art in Europe in September 2000, and the Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award also in 2000.

On Tuesday evening, 28 January 2003, the critic and freelance curator Mark Kremer will give a lecture on the background of Ahtila’s work.

Kunstkanaal (the TV Arts Channel) will refer to the exhibition in De Appel and transmit Love is a Treasure on 9 February. Cable channels and times for Kunstkanaal Amsterdam C, Rotterdam C and The Hague C, can be checked at http://www.kunstkanaal.nl

This exhibition received supplementary support from FRAME, Finnish Fund for Art Exchange.

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