Artist Lecture with Sonja Thomsen

Please join COMO for an artist lecture with Sonja Thomsen. Thomsen’s photographic installations use light as both medium and method, developing over 10 years what she calls ‘gravitational lensing’ - a practice named after the cosmic phenomenon where massive objects bend and magnify light from distant sources, acting as a magnifying glass. In Thomsen’s work, this concept becomes a metaphor for making visible the orbiting figures (often women) who shaped the canonical art stars we think we know.

This in-person event will take place at 1322 Grand Ave, Phoenix. Spaces are limited. If you cannot attend, please cancel your reserved tickets in the confirmation email you receive, so those waitlisted may attend.

Sonja Thomsen (American, b. 1978) builds luminous installations grounded in the lacunae of photo history, materializing imbalance, collaboration, reverence, and grief through images and sculptures. Working with photographs, optics, mirrors, and metallic materials, she choreographs environments that shift with viewers' movement, treating wonder as feminist methodology and expansive practice.Thomsen's work has been exhibited most recently at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. She has also exhibited at the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin; the Reykjavik Museum of Photography; Fonderia 20.9 Gallery, Verona; the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Higher Pictures, New York; the DePaul Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art; and The Suburban, Milwaukee, among others. Her work resides in collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University, the MoMA Library, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. A recipient of the Ruth Arts Mary L. Nohl Alumni Award and the Hermitage Artist Fellowship, she was recently invited to the Active Archive Residency at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Thomsen is the recipient of the Josef Breitenbach Research Fellowship at the Center for Creative photography for 2025-26. She is currently Full Professor, Adjunct in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This free event is sponsored by and the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture.

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