SONJA THOMSEN
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Sonja Thomsen (b.1978 Chicago IL) is an American artist and organizer who builds luminous spaces that investigate balance, accumulation and curiosity as central to matriarchy. Lines of inquiry into scientific epistemology and feminist politics are shaped by her profound personal experiences and are articulated in an object-based practice which encompasses books, installations, mobiles, and images. She is a mother working in abstraction, trained in the sciences, whose practice creates space for radical wonder. Thomsen’s artist book ‘You will find it where it is: a reader’ was published by Poor Farm Press in 2020.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Studio Art from Kenyon College and a MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited with Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, The Suburban Milwaukee, Soccer Club Club Chicago, Higher Pictures NY, DePaul Art Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, New Mexico Museum of Art, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Gallery f5,6 in Munich and Fonderia 20.9 in Verona IT among others. Her most recent installation, Orbiting Lucia (2022-2023), was a part of the exhibition ‘Refracting Histories,' at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago IL.
Thomsen's work resides in the collections of Walker Art Center, The Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, The Cleveland Museum of Art Ingalls Library, Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Foundation, Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection at SAIC Flaxman Library, Milwaukee Art Museum Library, Milwaukee Public Library, Central Branch, ,Rhode Island School of Design Fleet Library, Texas State University Alkek Library and Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University Library.
Publications include Experiment Photography: New Bauhaus Chicago , Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin, Hirmer Publishers; Keeper of the Hearth - Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph , Odette England, Schilt publishing; Un' apparizione di superfici , Luca Panaro, Italy, APM editions; GR-09022017, Fotogalleriet, Oslo, SKREID Publishing; Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment, Katherine Ware, New Mexico, Museum of New Mexico Press. Accolades include the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for Individual Artists, Milwaukee Arts Board New Work Commission, Digital Artist in Residence at Columbia College Chicago and a Hermitage Artist Fellowship.
Sonja Thomsen is a member of the international photography collective Piece of Cake Collective. Thomsen has been teaching in higher education for the last 18 years and is currently an Associate Professor, Adj. in the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL.
