Marie Thams is a visual artist, writer, editor, and educator with extensive experience in teaching, artistic writing, and critical reflection within higher art education. She holds an MFA in Fine Art and Art Theory from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art & History of Art from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Thams’s artistic practice moves between text, sound, performance, sculpture, artists’ film, and installation. Through her work, she investigates the role of language, the body, and the voice in shaping and negotiating experiences, relationships, and power structures. The close connection between artistic practice, writing, and critical reflection also forms an important foundation of her pedagogical work within text and theory.
Over the past years, Thams has taught and supervised students at institutions including the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Funen Art Academy, and Malmö Art Academy. Since 2022, she has also served as an external examiner at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her teaching is characterised by a close interplay between artistic practice, critical thinking, and writing as a method of knowledge production. Drawing on a multidisciplinary artistic practice, she explores how language can function both as artistic material and as a tool for analysis, reflection, and the generation of knowledge.
Alongside her artistic practice, Thams has developed an extensive body of work in writing, editing, and publishing. She has published essays and critical texts on art, language, power, and artists’ working conditions, and has edited several publications, including Trust, a Core Condition: Malmö Art Academy 25 Years and MAKING ROOM: Nordic Artists, Institutions and Artist Institutions in the Modern Breakthrough and Today. In 2024, she co-edited the anthology Person: Tekster om ligeværd, sprog og magt (Person: Texts on Equality, Language and Power), and in 2025 her monograph This Biopolitical Arena was published.
In addition to her teaching and publishing activities, Thams brings extensive experience in administrative and strategic work within the arts sector. Since 2022, she has served as Chair of the Danish Visual Artists Association (BKF), Denmark’s largest organisation for professional visual artists, and she has previously been a member of the Representative Assembly of the Danish Arts Foundation. Through these roles, she has worked on issues relating to artists’ working conditions, cultural policy, professional organisation, and the development of art institutions.
With her combination of artistic and pedagogical experience, theoretical expertise, editorial competence, and organisational leadership, Marie Thams will bring valuable perspectives to the field of text and theory at Malmö Art Academy. Her work is distinguished by a strong commitment to the role of language in artistic processes and to developing students’ ability to articulate, analyse, and communicate their artistic ideas.
Marie Thams will assume her position at Malmö Art Academy on 1 October 2026.