Sophie Thun appointed university professor of artistic photography

Sophie Thun (born 1985) works primarily with analogue photography techniques, their spaces, processes, and production and exhibition conditions.
 
From 2023 to 2025, she was a visiting professor in the photography class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and from 2020 to 2023, she was a university assistant at the Linz University of Art in the sculpture class – transmedial space.
 
She is a board member of Secession, Vereinigung bildender Künstler*innen, Vienna, and a member of the Camera Austria association. She is represented by Galerie SOPHIE TAPPEINER in Vienna.

Her most recent solo and group exhibitions include:
Secret Performance, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Wet Rooms, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (2025); Between Light and Wall, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, What do you do in bed?, with Joanna Woś, Gdańska Galeria Miejska, Gdańsk, Stolberggasse zu Friedrichstraße zu Grabbeplatz, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the uncontrolled aspect of rushing into position, with Ulay, SOPHIE TAPPEINER, Vienna (2024); Leaking Times, Cukrarna, Ljubljana, Back Stages, with Aurora Kiraly, ARAC, Bucharest (2023); Working Title, Galeria Madragoa, Lisbon, Trails and Tributes, Kunstverein Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Merge Layers, SOPHIE TAPPEINER, Vienna (2022); SHIFTS (RAL5014), Rosa Stern Space, Munich, grant with Sara Cwynar as part of the DZ Bank Work Grant, Art Foyer, Frankfurt, I don’t Remember a Thing. Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ Sophie Thun and the Archive of Zenta Dzividzinska, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga (2021); Stolberggasse, Secession, Vienna, Room Tour, with Karolina Jablońska, Galeria Raster, Warsaw, Extension, C/O Berlin (2020).

Thun was awarded the Grand Hans Purrmann Prize by the City of Speyer in 2025, the Otto Breicha Prize for Photographic Art and the City of Vienna's Promotion Prize for Fine Arts in 2024, the Outstanding Artist Award by the Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture in 2021, and the DZ Bank Art Collection's working scholarship and prize in 2019.
 
Publications: Wet Rooms, ed. Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, with texts by Pierre-Henri Foulon and Hélène Giannechini (2025), Zwischen Licht und Wand, ed. Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, with texts by Marijana Schneider, Daniel Muzyczuk, Magdalena Vukovic, Jule Govrin, DISTANZ Verlag (2024), Trails and Tributes, with texts by Alise Tifentale, Christin Müller, Torsten Scheid, ed. Kunstverein Hildesheim, Verlag für Moderne Kunst (2023), Sophie Thun, First Monographs, with texts by Catherine Wood, Lisa Long, Lucy Gallun, Charlotte Cotton, published by Phileas, DISTANZ Verlag (2022), Sophie Thun, with a text by Daniel Spoerri, published by Secession, Revolver Publishing (2020), WHITE FLAG, with Hanna Putz, with a text by Luca Lo Pinto, PAMPAM Publishing (2019).
 
Her works are in the collections of: Kunsthaus Bregenz, Museum der Moderne (Salzburg), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Sammlung Verbund (Vienna), Kunststiftung DZ Bank (Frankfurt am Main), Belvedere (Vienna), Wien Museum, Lentos Kunstmuseum (Linz), Kontakt Collection, SMART Museum (Chicago), OÖ Landesmuseum (Linz).