TAP & PAT part of Recontres Choréographiques internationals de Seine Saint-Dennis ( FR )

2.6.2023 première en France

TAP & PAT is a transdisciplinary project containing series of textile, drawing and performance works. 

Starting from a series of drawings created in 2021, which translate into textile works and performative scores scripting the inner worlds of the performative figures and their relations.  

Exploring disorientation, alienation and fragmentation, the choreographic threads of the two performers weave together different  jumbles, unfolding meaning in the gaps of our seeing. The piece approaches ideas of manual work, where gestural objects, their ordinary referencing and the fascinations and obsessions of the figures become the landscape of everydayness with an uncanny layer.

The textile pieces are hand woven cloths referencing the domestic , the familiar and the so called naïve, simultaneously erupting from their form- creating layers that camouflage and dribble on to one another. Attempting to evoke a sense of the un-controlled and messy in regards to the usable and decorative. Figures from drawings are then scribbled onto them, partly camouflaging within the mesh of the yarns and partly exhibiting themselves as part of the story of the fabric.


Two new textile works on display at The Finnish Institute in Paris, 14.4.-13.7.2023

During the exhibition, Imagine Everyday! Outsider Art Finland, two new textile artworks by Sonja Jokiniemi will be presented at Institut finlandais.

Sonja Jokiniemi : Work 3, 2023
Sonja Jokiniemi : Work 0, 2022—2023

The two new textile works exhibited at Institut finlandais are part of a series of works originally co-commissioned by HAM – Helsinki Art Museum as part of their exhibition Dance! Movement in the Visual Arts 1880–2020 in 2022.

These loom woven and hand sewn textile works, resembling domestic cloths, with their everyday like patterns and materiality, are flushing out from themselves. Attempting to evoke a sense of the un-controlled and messy in relation to the decorative in visual and embodied expressions with a hint of celebration and joyful resistance through their usage of multiple colours. She then scribbles onto them figures from her drawings, that deal with disproportions and dislocations, figures imagined in different emotional states and situations in life. These figures partly camouflage and partly exhibit themselves as part of the story of the fabric. The artist uses the technique of pulling threads whilst manually weaving the fabrics. Deconstruction and construction are simultaneously at play and the fraying of a cloth creates spaces for the polyphonic, fragmented and entangled. The quality from the line drawing translated into the sewing produces a certain frailty that leaves these figures with a ghostly presence.

The works are related to performative sketches Tap & Pat, that have been shown in museum contexts at HAM – Helsinki Art Museum and Oulu Art Museum, FI. The project has been supported by Moving in November through artistic advice and International distribution and co-produced by the Finnish Institute in France (Institut finlandais).


Source: https://www.institut-finlandais.fr/en/sonj...

Solo exhibition at BAG gallery in Bordeaux ( FR ) 14.4.-17.6.2023

In figures of Writing

This spring, concomitantly with her exhibition at the Finnish Institute in Paris, we welcome Sonja Jokiniemi, Finnish choreographer, performer, artist and scenographer recently presented at the HAM -Helsinki Art Museum- in the major exhibition Dance! Movement in the Visual Arts 1880–2020. This exhibition features drawing and textile works by Sonja Jokiniemi from 2017 to 2023, which embody the longer artistic quest on storytelling, linguistic systems and haptic relationality.

New works on textile and paper presented as part of HAM-Helsinki Art Museum´s up-coming exhibition

Dance!- Movement in the Visual Arts 1880-2020

Exhibition : 25.3.-11.9.2022

In spring 2022, HAM will be opening a comprehensive exhibition on dance and movement in visual arts. The exhibition highlights works of art that depict dance, dance-like movement and corporeality in the collections of Finnish museums from the 1880s to the current decade.

Different eras, viewpoints, techniques and styles alternate in the works. The dance and shapes of movement in the pieces reflect the realities, hopes and ideals of different eras. Movement and dance are connected to the way we inhabit the world. The depiction of the moving body can reveal the way we view freedom, harmony, identity and gender roles.

Movement and dance allow us to see the freeing power and joy as well as the quiet, focused examination of the essence of movement in visual arts. In the exhibition, the interaction between the works and the visitors resembles a choreography, helping us to identify with different corporeal ways of existing in the world. The dance outlined in the works reflects both life force and intensity as well as stillness and fragility. In the words of Finnish dancer and visual artist Maggie Gripenberg, who lived in the early 1900s:

”I want to dance! I will no longer only paint – I will live and dance!”

The exhibition was curated by art and culture historian Hanna-Reetta Schreck and HAM Curator Arttu Merimaa.

ÖH part of ICE HOT, Nordic Dance Platform

Sonja Jokiniemi´s latest stage work ÖH ( Premier on November 2020 ) will be presented as part of ICE HOT, Nordic Dance Platform on February 10th 2022.

“ÖH is a multisensorial installation created from ordinary objects, large wooden structure, handmade rugs and textiles. The work binds together a sensorial logic as a choreographic proposition. Here subjects and objects are multiples,  intertwining between different meanings and associations. A site, where colours narrate and textures dialogue. Sensuality, hybrids and the uncanny  create an artistic world of discovery and divergence.

ÖH, arranges and deconstructs ordinary landscape into the poetics of everyday. An idea of piling up instead of dividing creates a world where many colours of human and objecthood are possible and explored. The work attempts towards liberation from binaries and construction of multi-temperamental togetherness, where abrasion points, reverie, dissecting and care all play a well grounded part in an idea of creation, that cannot be separated from destruction.

The performance invites the audience  into a web of weaving meaning and contact, tripping into the associative.”

Exhibition: Close Encounters in Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen

Close Encounters is a meeting between contemporary art and choreography. The two have a long and fruitful relationship. Choreographers are increasingly invited into museum and gallery spaces, and the boundaries between performing and visual arts have never been more fluid. This edition of Close Encounters is a choreographic exhibition, and it looks into choreography as practice and as expression in relation to the conventions of the exhibition space.

The six works of the exhibition are all durational and accessible for the full extent of the opening hours. Visitors can move around and interact with the works – as much as they like, for as long as they like. The works present different approaches and perspectives on audience, body, movement, contemporary art and choreography, and contribute – each one and together – to unfold the format of the choreographic exhibition.

Dancers and their bodies play an essential role in Fält by Adèle Essle Zeiss, which is an installation of floating bodies, and in Already Unmade by Andros Zins-Browne where the dancer de-constructs his physical practice. Choreography and visual arts are combined in Cranky Chunks by Sonja Jokiniemi, and in Conspiracy Archives where Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir’s somatic dance and choreography comes to life through advanced technology. In STAGE by Christian Falsnaes visitors are encouraged to take the stage, and guided through headphones, to perform a choreography. In Black Yoga Screaming Chamber by Erna Ómarsdóttir & Valdimar Jóhannsson visitors are invited to scream their frustrations away in a padded black chamber.

This is the third edition of Close Encounters presented by Dansehallerne in collaboration with Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art.

12-15 November 2020 in Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, Denmark.