Today, 1997.
Photo: Pirje Mykkänen/Central Art Archives, Helsinki
Curated by Maria Hirvi
When Eija-Liisa Ahtila captured the first Vincent award for European art in 2000, it came as no surprise to those familiar with the visual subtlety and narrative force evident in all of her video work—from the three punchy TV-related shorts Me/We, Okay, and Gray (all 1993) to the two-screen Consolation Service, 1999, a story of interpersonal disintegration and its aftermath singled out by critics at that year’s Venice Biennale. Organized by Kiasma’s Maria Hirvi, these works and others, including Anne, Aki and God, 1998, in which the borders between reality, imagination, and mental pathology blur to extinction, survey a decade of Ahtila’s output.
