Sonja Thomsen

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. Her lines of inquiry into scientific epistemology and feminist politics are shaped by her profound personal experiences and are expressed through an object-based practice that includes books, installations, mobiles, and images. Trained in the sciences and a mother working in abstraction, her 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 an MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited with institutions such as Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, The Suburban Milwaukee, Soccer Club Club Chicago, Higher Pictures NY, DePaul Art Museum, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, 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, Italy, among others. Her most recent installation, Orbiting Lucia (2022–2023), was part of the exhibition Refracting Histories at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Her work is held in the collections of the Walker Art Center, The Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, 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 the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University Library.

Thomsen’s 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, APM Editions, Italy), GR-09022017 (Fotogalleriet, Oslo, SKREID Publishing), and Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment (Katherine Ware, Museum of New Mexico Press).

Her 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. Thomsen is also a member of the international photography collective Piece of Cake Collective. She has been teaching in higher education for the last 18 years and is currently an Associate Professor (Adjunct) in the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.