Will Burns | Global Stuff.......................................................................................

to her native Finland lays the image on its side, with each section of the tree out of sync, to underscore the difficulty of perceiving and recording other living beings through methods invented by humans. In a sense Ahtila is asking us to confront our own limits of perspective, and the ways that trees continually break the frame, dwarfing us in the process, and perhaps offering a sense of solace in that experience of being rendered tiny by such a majestic and restless organism. In her poem responding to the artwork, Living Portrait of a Tree, Nina Mingya Powles captures both this sense of being overawed by the scale and ceaseless motion of the tree, while also reminding us that these immense beings can be a reassuring presence in a turbulent world:

Girl under tree, looking up.

Gust so strong she puts her palm on it to steady herself.