Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Horizontal

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's poetic video installation presents a portrait-in-motion of a giant spruce tree shifting in the wind. In order to make it fit into an exhibition space scaled for human viewers, the artist chose to project the image horizontally rather than vertically. This simple rotation of 90 degrees powerfully challenges habitual modes of organizing and depicting reality by making visible our anthropocentric perspective. In between painting and cinema, strange and beautiful, Horizontal probes human perception and invites us to consider the coexistence of separate spatial and temporal spheres for different living beings.