Sonja Jokiniemi: Performative sketches in the exhibition facilities

Together with her working group, choreographer, artist and performer Sonja Jokiniemi has prepared a series of four performances for HAM’s exhibition Dance! Movement in the visual arts 1880–2020. The exhibition features two new textile works by Jokiniemi. Both the textile works and the performances are part of a broader working process in which Jokiniemi and her cooperation partners, Leila Kourkia and Marlon Moilanen, use drafts from their work process premiering in 2023 to create performance sketches in the exhibition space. The textiles are hand-woven and sewn mycelium-like works resembling household textiles, the insides of which are wrapped around different characters. The corporeality of the textiles, the characters’ accented body parts, the dimensions, the expressions and the threads leaking out of the fabrics produce a narrative towards human bodily expression. The performance sketches, realised with different configurations and line-ups, explore the insides of the textiles as poetic sources of inspiration for movement in the space.

In Jokiniemi’s art, performances, installations, textiles and drawings open self-determined perspectives on corporeality and communication. Living and working in Switzerland and Finland, Jokiniemi is a graduate of the Amsterdam-based Das Theatre education programme. Her works have been performed broadly at international and Finnish venues alike: MDT in Sweden, STUK – A House for Dance, Image and Sound and BUDA Arts Centre in Belgium, Tanzquartier Wien in Austria, and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Zodiak – Center for New Dance in Finland. Jokiniemi has held exhibitions at venues such as Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent.