The title of the exhibition borrows from Hélène Cixous’ 1975 essay Laugh of the Medusa where “woman must put herself into the text- as into the world and into history- by her own movement.”   As an exercise in embracing entanglements, thomsen welcomed the invitation to experiment within the gallery, conjuring connections between the Witch of Agnesi and the Laugh of Medusa as a place of origin.

As part of sonja thomsen’s installation at 062 “by her own movement”, thomsen will be in conversation with fellow Chicago artist Jen Delos Reyes. The two will discuss the idea of “writing oneself” into being and what it means to create a life and practice that intersects with cultures of care, experimentation, world-building, writing, embodied learning, and collaboration. Both artists will also share from their most recent publications Thomsen’s You Will Find it Where it is: A Reader, released in 2020 by Poor Farm Press and Delos Reyes’s forthcoming anthology, Defiantly Optimistic: Turning Up in a World on Fire, Collected Writings 2007-2022.

Women Must Write Herself: sonja thomsen and Jen Delos Reyes in Dialogue took place April 9, 2022, at 3:00 pm.