Toni Schmale was born in Hamburg in 1980. She started out as a professional football player and played in the German regional league, the Bundesliga and the national team from 1994 until 2002. After her career as a professional athlete ended, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, where she studied media art and graduated in 2009. From 2009 until 2012, she studied performance art with Carola Dertnig and performance sculpture with Monica Bonvicini at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she graduated in 2013. Among other awards, Toni Schmale received the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize in 2011, the Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 2013, and the Otto Mauer Prize in 2017, which gave rise to a solo show at the Vienna Secession. Also in 2017, she received the BALTIC Artists' Award, and her works were shown at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead (UK). Other international solo and group exhibitions include the Salzburger Kunstverein (2013), the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014), the Kyiv Biennale (2015), and the nGbK – Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst in Berlin (2016). In 2021, Toni Schmale won the KÖR Kunst Vienna Public Art Competition, which culminated in her sculpture TANKE 24/7 being realised in the Stefan-Weber Park in Vienna, where she lives and works.