American artist, Sonja Thomsen’s interdisciplinary practice harnesses light as both medium and metaphor, creating immersive installations that blur the boundaries between photography, sculpture, and architecture. Working at the intersection of feminist theory and scientific inquiry, Thomsen transforms exhibition spaces into sites of perceptual discovery through installations incorporating dichroic glass, mirrors, and metallic materials that shift with viewers’ movement. Wonder serves as both methodology and subject in her practice as she builds images, objects, and video that refract, reflect, and record light—creating dynamic environments that resist fixed interpretation while positioning wonder as a feminist act of resistance against dominant modes of knowing that privilege detached objectivity over lived experience.

Her current project —and then down became up (2023-ongoing)—collaborate across time with photographers Lucia Moholy and Hazel Larsen Archer. Thomsen illuminates overlooked histories of women in science and art, weaving these narratives into contemporary conversations about gender, power, and knowledge production.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, Soccer Club Club Chicago, Higher Pictures NY, DePaul Art Museum, the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, New Mexico Museum of Art, and The Suburban Milwaukee. Her work resides in notable collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Reykjavik Museum of Photography.

Publications featuring Thomsen’s work include Experiment Photography: New Bauhaus Chicago (Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin, Hirmer Publishers) and Keeper of the Hearth – Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph (Schilt publishing). She has received numerous accolades including the Ruth Arts Mary L. Nohl Alumni Award, Milwaukee Arts Board New Work Commission, and a Hermitage Artist Fellowship.

Thomsen 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 currently serves as Full Professor, Adj. in the Photography Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she fosters the next generation of interdisciplinary artists. Thomsen creates experiences that spark curiosity while advancing important dialogues about feminism, epistemology, and the politics of perception.