Sonja Jokiniemi (born in Kuopio, Finland) is an artist in the fields of performing and visual arts. Her works are situated in the cross-overs of performances, drawings and textiles in exhibition and stage formats. A lot of her work is rooted in the quest of storytelling, language systems and haptic relationality- calling towards alternative ways of speaking,knowledge formation and re-systemizing the values and socialness of language and perception. Jokiniemi works with material installations on stage exploring the relationship between things and beings; their ordinary and uncanny relationships. More recently an increased investment in the research of manual labour, craft traditions and cross generational knowledge sharing, results in the intertwined production of textile and dance art.
Jokiniemi graduated from the Performing Arts programme at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam 2013 and with a BA degree in Contemporary Dance at Laban Centre in London. Additionally she has completed a study in Expressive Arts therapy from Inartes Institute in Helsinki 2020.
Sonja’s work has been supported by many performing arts venues such as STUK-A House for Dance, music and Image (BE), Zodiak Centre for Dance, Moving in November festival and Kiasma Contemporary Art museum (FI), MDT- Stockholm (SWE), BUDA Kunstzentrum (BE). She has recently exhibited at the Finnish Institute in Paris, HAM-Helsinki Art museum, Oulu Art museum, Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and Dr.Guislaan Museum in Ghent.
In Sonja Jokiniemi's work, the impossibility of normality has always been described as the only human condition. Her new creation, Armo, opens up an associative space where mementos and remembering are braided into a tangible disorder.
Embedded in the reminiscence of Jokiniemi's Karelian roots, reactivated by the recent loss of her father, Armo is a choreography for four remarkable and singular dancers, which deals with remnants as non-verbal narratives residing in the body.
In the work, cyclical choreographic patterns, shared rituals of repetitions and obsessive individual behaviours are infused with the spiritual leftovers of Jokiniemi’s lost family roots in Lake Ladoga. At the heart of the work is a recognition of the cyclical and non-linear nature of life and death, and of the memories left behind.
For this work, co-produced by Zodiak – Centre for New Dance and presented at Dance House Helsinki, Jokiniemi develops a choreography woven into a regular but imperfect canvas, echoing the artist's transgressive ongoing reflection on women's labour.
Armo aims to divert the dominant aesthetics of art and normative ways of dealing with knowledge and language in order to liberate subconscious and disobedient forces that can otherwise be classified as deviant, funny or incoherent.
Premiere: October 7, 2024 at Dance House Helsinki (Pannu hall).
