Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Another of her films, which debuted in 2009, is Where is Where?. New York's Museum of Modern Art, which housed the seven-day exhibition, called it, "a haunting and layered consideration of how history affects our perception of reality." In the film, a present-day poet, with the assistance of a figure who is the personification of death, investigates a murder committed fifty years ago. Two young Arab boys had killed their French friend during the Algerian War of Independence. As the poet investigates, images from the past and present begin to mix and collide; at one point the poet discovers the two boys seated in a boat, in the small swimming pool behind his house.

Among Ahtila's many other works is The Hour of Prayer, first presented in 2005 at the Venice Biennale in Italy. The film is a four-channel video project that shows scenes from a woman's experience surrounding the death of her dog. Bridget Goodbody, writing for Time Out New York, says that it presents "a nonnarrative cycle of apparently random, but nonetheless consequential scenes." Some of those scenes show how, when she was away from her dog, he fell through the ice of a frozen pond, breaking his leg. Another shows the dog brought to a veterinarian for treatment of the injury; a diagnosis of bone cancer is made. After the dog dies, the film presents scenes of the woman moving on with her life, living as an artist in Africa.

In 2002 she had a solo show at Tate Modern, and in 2006 her multi-screen video piece The Wind (2006) was exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). She has also had solo shows at Guggenheim in Bilbao, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Parasol Unit in London, ACMI in Melbourne and DHC/ART in Montreal.

In 2002, Ahtila created a film called The House, for which she performed research that included conducting interviews with people who are afflicted by psychotic mental disorders. The film begins with a woman driving to a secluded house, and as events continue they take on a dreamlike state. The sounds become disorienting and the images begin to combine: the woman can see the car on the walls of the house; she hears boat horns that make no sense. The film is meant to be presented in an exhibit that displays each of the three screens on separate walls, making the viewer feel as if they are actually in the house where the project was filmed.

Ahtila has won several art and film awards, including the inaugural Vincent Award (2000), Artes Mundi (2006), Prince Eugen Medal (2008), and most recently Art Academic in Finland (2009).

Ahtila has participated in numerous international art exhibitions such as Manifesta (1998), the Venice Biennale (2005 and 1999), Documenta 11 (2002), São Paulo Art Biennial (2008) and the Sydney Biennale in 2002 and 2018.)

In 1993, Ahtila created the three mini-films Me/We, Okay, and Gray: Each of these 90-second mini-films was shown separately and as a trilogy, as trailers in cinemas, on television during commercial breaks and in art galleries. Ahtila explores questions of identity and group relations through her use of narrative conventions derived from film, television and advertising. In Me/We the father of a family speaks about his family in a monologue and other players mouth his words. When the father speaks about his family members' emotions, their personalities mix together and become inseparable. In Okay a woman is speaking about violence in man and woman relationship and as she steps across the room like a tiger in a cage, her voice goes up and shows pure violence. In Gray three women in a lift go down into the water and talk about the atomic explosion and its effects, while words and pictures mix identity crisis and an atomic disaster.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila (born 1959 in Hämeenlinna, Finland) is a contemporary visual artist and filmmaker. She lives and works in Helsinki.