Written by Roger Bellows Tuesday, 29 March 2011 20:50

SKMU Sorlandets Kunstmuseum Presents Eija-Liisa Ahtila Films

KRISTIANSAND.- SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum presents Where Is Where?, a multi-screen installation by Finish artist and filmmaker Eija-Liisa Ahtila (b. 1959). Ahtila's masterfully crafted narratives and touching portrayal of characters have captured the public's interest and won critical acclaim worldwide. Her films and multi-screen installations explore and experiment with storytelling, creating extraordinary tales out of ordinary human experiences. The exhibition is on view from March 26 through May 15, 2011.

In her earlier works Ahtila has dealt with the unsettling human dramas at the centre of personal relationships e.g. with teenage sexuality, family relations, mental disintegration and death. Her later works however deal with more profound and basic artistic questions where she investigates the processes of perception and attribution of meaning, at times in the light of larger cultural and existential themes like colonialism or faith.

Where Is Where? (2008) takes us on a challenging journey. The starting point is an incident from the French-Algerian war in the 1950s, when French soldiers dragged 40 Algerian male villagers out of their beds and executed them. Where Is Where? Connects this to another incident, when two Algerian boys murdered a French playmate as a response to the massacre. To these storylines others are added, where times and places mix and overlap. Where Is Where? is an existential drama that relates just as much to past colonial conflicts as to contemporary encounters between different world views.

Where Is Where? by Eija-Liisa Ahtila is the first exhibition in SKMU's special look on art from Finland in 2011. Later this year we will have solo exhibitions with the artists Marko Vuokola, Pilvi Takala and Sanna Kannisto.




Sørlandet Art Museum was established in 1995, and moved into its new museum facilities in the city centre of Kristiansand in February 2000. The Museum covers the entire region of Agder. This means that the museum is a regional resource centre in the art field. Another distinctive feature of this institution is that it is the only one of two art museums in Norway that incorporates both visual arts and crafts in its work. Sørlandet Art Museum is engaged in a wide range of activities, which include exhibitions of its art collection, temporary exhibitions of contemporary art and travelling exhibitions to schools and kindergartens.

Christianssands Billedgalleri, established in 1902, forms the basis of the collection. It has a regional character and spans from the early 1800s until the present day. The collection includes historical works by major Norwegian artists such as Amandus Nielsen and Christian Krohg as well as influential contemporary artists. The museum also collects and exhibits contemporary Norwegian arts and crafts. Visit : http://www.skmu.no/

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