THE SUBURBAN
723 S. 5th St, Milwaukee, WI 53204
708-305-2657
The Suburban is open by appointment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Marginal Notes is an evolving installation of photographs, light modulations and architectural interventions at The Suburban by artist Sonja Thomsen whose installations present wonder as a radical way to imagine post-patriarchal futures. Marginal Notes is an exercise in moving the locus of attention to the margins, embracing entanglements and the radical act of “putting oneself into the text through her own movement.” (Hélène Cixous)
Simultaneous to the exhibition is the release of Thomsen’s book You Will Find It Where It Is: A Reader, published by Poor Farm Press. The book offers a lens through which she reframes history, and reexamines the legacies of artists Margaret Fuller, Lucia Moholy, and Maria Nordman among others. Thomsen is reflecting on her location as a woman working in abstraction, trained in the sciences, whose practice is beguiled by the plurality of light. The title of the exhibition borrows form Lucia Moholy’s 1972 essay Marginalien zu Moholy-Nagy/Moholy-Nagy, Marginal Notes in which she corrects inaccuracies written into the narrative of she and László Moholy-Nagy histories.
Sonja Thomsen is a Milwaukee/Chicago based artist whose multifaceted practice uses light; in image, object and architecture, to claim the peripheral as the locus of attention. 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. Thomsen has exhibited with the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, Center for Photography at Woodstock , DePaul Art Museum Chicago, Gallery f5,6 in Munich, Higher Pictures in New York, John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, and Soccer Club Club Chicago among others. Thomsen’s work resides in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, DePaul University Art Museum, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Reykjavik Museum of Photography. She is currently Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Friday, February 19 at 4pm CST
Virtual opening of Marginal Notes
Sonja Thomsen in Conversation with Michelle Grabner and Lisa Sutcliffe
https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/85602574774
Saturday, February 27 at 12pm CST
Collaborative Conversations: Sonja Thomsen & Aaron Turner
Sharing a visual conversation on anewnothing
https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/81180780491
Friday, March 12 at 5pm CST
Collaborative Conversations: “Musings from the Margins of a Polychrome Future”
Lafayette Cruise, Sonja Thomsen & Wide Awakes WI
https://saic-edu.zoom.us/j/88411226701
Thursday, March 18 at 4pm CST
Collaborative Conversations: “You will find it where it is: a reader”
Editor & Designer Christina Labey, Designer Elana Schlenker and author Sonja Thomsen, published by Poor Farm Press
Celebrating 10 Years (2013- 2023) 