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ÖH – Sonja Jokiniemi

A search for naivety and resistance amongst rugs, knots and stitches

ÖH is a group performance where a multisensorial textile environment is created with handmade rugs, knots and sewing techniques. Together they bind a sensorial logic – colours narrate and textures dialogue. Sensuality, hybrids and the uncanny create an artistic world of discovery, divergence and liberation from binaries. Drawings think the subconscious and sculpt the performers’ embodiments, weaving them into textile.

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.

Sonja Jokiniemi graduated from DAS Theatre master’s programme, Amsterdam 2013, and has worked in Central Europe and Scandinavia since then. Her artistic works combine choreographic performance with drawings, textiles and sounds – together they create alternative and multi textural languages.

Jokiniemi’s works have been recently shown at MDT Stockholm (SE), STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound (BE), arts centre BUDA (BE), Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art (FI), and Tanzquartier Wien (AT). She is co-curating Mad House at Helsinki’s Bad House festival.

Performance & collaboration: Sonja Jokiniemi, Leila Kourkia, Marlon Moilanen, Herman Nyby, Maria Saivosalmi & Tuuli Vahtola | Choreography & concept: Sonja Jokiniemi | Visual design: Heikki Paasonen & Sonja Jokiniemi | Sound design: Gil Schneider | Rya rugs implementation: Aino Ojala, based on drawings by Sonja Jokiniemi | Producer: Riikka Thitz | Photographer: Katri Naukkarinen | Co-production: Zodiak (Helsinki, FI); Moving in November festival (Helsinki, FI); STUK – House for Dance, Image & Sound (Leuven, BE); Life Long Burning (LLB) – Towards a Sustainable Eco-System for Contemporary Dance in Europe (2018-2022), supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union | Residencies: Mad House (Helsinki, FI) | International distribution: Something Great (Berlin, DE) | With support by: Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, TelepART Mobility Support