sophie tottie

Sophie Tottie (b. 1964, Stockholm, Sweden) is a Swedish artist based in Stockholm, following many years living and working internationally, including periods in New York and Berlin.

Working across painting, drawing, objects, photography, printmaking and video, Tottie explores subjects shaped by site-specific, existential, political and historical references, examining the relationship between individual experience and larger structural systems.

Since the 1990s, Tottie has developed a distinctive conceptual practice concerned with systems of representation, language and the structures through which information and meaning are organised and understood. Her works frequently develop in response to the particular spaces in which they are presented. At the same time, their methods of production remain deliberately visible: traces of the hand and tools, repetition, material processes and sustained acts of making become embedded within the work.

This relationship between conceptual structure and physical process is central to Tottie’s practice. Across different media, she considers how knowledge is constructed, communicated and transformed, while allowing irregularity, repetition and the material evidence of making to complicate otherwise systematic forms.

Tottie studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1986 to 1991 and at the Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques in Paris from 1989 to 1990. Her work has been presented internationally since the early 1990s.

Major exhibitions include On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Mirror’s Edge, curated by Okwui Enwezor (1999–2001); Visions du Nord / Nuit Blanche, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1998); and Deposition, 47th Venice Biennale (1997). She has also presented solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Göteborgs Konsthall, Lunds Konsthall, Malmö Konstmuseum and Konstakademien / The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm.

Recent institutional presentations include Making Concrete and Conceivable, Västerås Art Museum (2025–26), and Yet Another Morning – Drawing in the Moderna Museet Collection, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2025–26).

Alongside her artistic practice, Tottie has held significant academic positions. She was Professor of Fine Art at Malmö Art Academy, Lund University (2001–09), Visiting Artist/Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University (2009–10), and Professor of Fine Art at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2012–22).

In 2026, Tottie was awarded the Paul Hedqvist Award by Konstakademien / The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm, recognising her longstanding contribution and distinctive conceptual practice.

Tottie’s work is held in major public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.