Sensuality, hybrids and the uncanny create an artistic world of discovery, divergence and liberation from binaries. In her group performance ÖH , Sonja Jokiniemi creates a multisensorial textile environment using handmade rugs as well as knotting and sewing techniques to bind together a sensorial logic as a choreographic proposition. This long duration haptic performance invites the audience to a non-linear logic of weaving meaning and contact. A catalogue of drawn images creates the subconsciousness of the work, where drawings sculpt the performers’ embodiment and weave into textile. Here colours narrate and textures dialogue. In ÖH , Jokiniemi searches between human and non-human beings for a space where the naive, intimate, surreal and unknown touch each other, a space for beauty that stands alone alongside mainstream aesthetics, while gearing towards a powerful metaphor for resistance and escape from categorization and limiting forms. The piece is this year’s co-production between Zodiak– Center for new dance and Moving in November. Sonja Jokiniemi presented her work BLAB in Moving in November 2017.

Sonja Jokiniemi

Sonja Jokiniemi was born in 1983. She is a choreographer, performer and self-taught visual artist. Jokiniemi graduated from DAS Theatre (previously DasArts) MA Degree programme in Performing Arts in Amsterdam 2013. Prior to this she has completed BA degree on Contemporary Dance at Laban Centre in London 2006 and taken part at Daghdha Mentoring programme in Limerick, Ireland. Jokiniemi’s works deal with creation of alternative and multi-textural languages, narrations and logics. She combines textile, drawing and live performance in her works that reach towards a mesh of human and non-human relationships, thinking images and speaking textures. Tactility and hapticity are important aspects in proposing ways of knowledge production. Besides her own artistic practice Jokiniemi co-curates the Bad House festival that is part of Mad House Helsinki, and works artisitically with a variety of different groups. Currently, she works and lives in Helsinki, Finland and Lausanne, Switzerland.