Johtingeaidnu - The Path Within

The artwork brings together two worlds: reindeer nomadism in the Arctic Sápmi region and the bioscience of epigenetics. It invites into a world of multicosmological science, that stems from the relationality of time and the relations of the nomadic reindeer worlds. It engages with the concept of shared embodied memories carried within humans, reindeer, and in Johtingeaidnu – the ancestral migratory paths. The artwork results of a long-term collaboration between artist-researcher Emilia Tikka, reindeer herder-artist Oula A. Valkeapää, and artist-researcher Leena Valkeapää. The installation consists of films, objects and stories in which migratory paths, along with the bodies that inhabit them, carry traces of pasts and possible futures.

The artwork is set in the lands of Sápmi. Here, the centuries-old practice of nomadic reindeer husbandry has faced numerous challenges throughout its history: first from settlers and borders, and today it is climate change and the expansion of infrastructure and tourism that threaten the ancestral migration paths. Rather than illustrating the end of nomadic reindeer husbandry, the artwork envisions a hopeful future emerging from the ruins of contemporary worlds.

One of the stories invites us into Oula A. Valkeapää’s reindeer world where relationships with Arctic flowers, stones, rivers, and technological objects come alive in daily practices. Using an action camera to film his everyday life with the reindeer, the video illustrates how the past intertwines with his contemporary life through embodied memories – as echoes of lives lived along the now lost migratory paths.

The second story is a short film directed by Emilia Tikka, set in a speculative future after a climate catastrophe. However, it is not a story told in linear time: in this world the epigenetic memories of past nomads are alive and carried within reindeer bones and migratory paths. The story follows a bioscientist who has come to the Arctic to find new techniques for remembering.

An animated topographical map inside a 4-meter high Lavvu-tent invites to witness the oral histories of the Valkeapää family, from the beginning of large-scale herding in the 1500s, through the diminishing of their migratory lands in the 2000s, and into a hopeful future emerging from the ruins of contemporary worlds.

Drawing from living relationships within contemporary reindeer worlds and bioscientific research, the artwork materializes a world where epigenetic memories are shared between humans and reindeer, and carried within the ancestral migratory paths – Johtingeaidnu. Rather than separating the divergent worlds, the installation weaves them together as stories of new practices of remembering in places where past, present, and hopeful futures intertwine.

The research-based artwork is part of the doctoral thesis of Emilia Tikka and long term artistic collaboration between the authors between 2020-2025.

Collaboration partners:

Professor, Dr. Miriam Liedvogel (epigenetic and animal migration), Professor Dr. Oded Rechavi (epigenetic memory)

Project funding:

Schering Stiftung in Berlin and Bioart Society in Helsinki

Press coverage:

Der Freitag, Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin Art Link

Exhibitions:

solo-show at Schering Stiftung in Berlin 10.4.2025 - 18.7.2025

Contamination of Time at Seinäjoki Kunsthalle 12.6.2026 - 9.1.2027