Sonja Thomsen

Performance: in the space of elsewhere

Friday, December 15 • 6:30–8 pm

UW dance students offer an evening of original choreography in response to Sonja Thomsen: in the space of elsewhere. The dance will be performed on multiple levels of the installation and extend into the museum's main galleries.

The students are enrolled in Movement Composition for the Visual and Performing Arts class taught by Professor Li Chiao-Ping, of the UW-Madison Dance Department. Li has directed Li Chiao-Ping Dance since 1990. Renowned for her solo work, she is also acclaimed for her multimedia and intergenerational productions.

press release: The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) announces Sonja Thomsen: in the space of elsewhere, a site-specific installation that spans the length of the lobby and ascends the full height of the museum’s iconic windows.

Artist Sonja Thomsen brings her photographic way of seeing to this commissioned, multistory installation. Mobilizing the properties of light and time, she has created an immersive environment that plays with the way light and shadow interact with the museum’s bold triangular architecture. This project emerged out of a desire to amplify MMoCA’s unique structural features, particularly the soaring glass icon, and as a way to explore public space, transverse the interior and exterior, and energize the museum’s relationship to the surrounding community and its visitors.

Thomsen’s thoughtful placement of large-scale photographic murals, mirrored and faceted objects, and sculptural elements direct and scatter beams of light across the lobby walls, floors, and surfaces. This work delicately interrupts views of the building’s interior and transforms visitor’s encounters with the space itself. At the same time, materials reflect light out to the street, playing with notions of transparency and threshold, while also drawing people into the museum to experience the wondrous potential of light. The rhythm, movement, and reflections of light within the tangible space of the museum encourage an awareness of the intangible space of observation, a space where people can engage in the act of seeing and the state of being. In reference to her artistic practice, the artist explains that her interest lies in “creating spaces that highlight the inaccessible. There should always be a place for wonder; it is a direct line to new knowledge.”

In conjunction with the installation, a number of interdisciplinary programs will take place, both at the museum and off-site, to explore the space of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

BIO: Sonja Thomsen is a Milwaukee-based artist whose multifaceted practice combines photography, sculpture, interactive installation and site-specific public art to create spaces reflective of our own perceptions.  Since earning an MFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute (2004), she has exhibited with Higher Pictures, DePaul Art Museum, Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, New Mexico Museum of Art, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Gallery f5,6 in Munich among others. Her work will be included in the upcoming exhibition at Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, titled New Bauhaus Chicago: Experimental Photography.  

Sonja Thomsen is a member of the international photography collective Piece of Cake and co-director of The Pitch Project. Thomsen is a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hours at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art are Tuesday–Thursday (noon–5 pm); Friday (noon–8 pm); Saturday (10 am–8 pm); and Sunday (noon–5 pm). The museum is closed on Mondays.