Sonja Ahlers: The Selves

Okay, so I should have blogged about Sonja a long, long time ago because she is one of my fave artists-
the time is right as she just released her 3rd book (this time through Drawn & Quarterly) The Selves.

Pages:





Getting to hold a Sonja Ahlers book is a gift! While it's not a diary it's almost the same feeling one might have upon finding someone's diary, but someone really cool & interesting. Hah. Perfectly curated clips, words and phrases- there's so many things to see. Each time I look through one of her books I find something new- or something will affect me in a totally different way and take on a whole other meaning then it had a year ago. I can't even get it into it too much- you should totally just have a copy for yourself. And keep it around for when company comes over because they always like it too. And then you laugh and they point out their favorite parts and you point out yours.

Drawn & Quarterly says this:

Before blogs, there were zines. Before zines, there were scrapbooks. Sometimes overlooked in the quest to produce high culture, these most direct and intimate means of communication and recording memory are the tools favored by Sonja Ahlers in the making of her art. A self-taught artist and writer, Ahlers wears her pop-culture obsessions on her sleeve, professing her love for such visual icons as Princess Di, Holly Hobbie, and Stevie Nicks. Focusing on found objects such as stickers, greeting cards, andmagazine photos collected in collage framework, complete with song lyrics hand-lettered in cursive script and heartbreaking, melancholic watercolors, Ahlers explores and exposes the social construction of roles, feminine and otherwise. Beginning with incipient childhood self-awareness and traversing high school status jockeying to adult social climbing, the cultural imagery that supports and informs personal identity is given uneasy new meanings and importance in Ahlers’s visual remixes.

Kathleen Hanna says this:

Sonja Ahlers' meditations on childhood, pop culture and feminine power are beyond entertaining. Entering the alternate reality she's created in 'The Selves' I found myself standing somewhere seductive, familiar and very funny.

96 pages and in color.

Sonja's previous 2 books are just as amazing:



Temper, Temper- which is now out of print, but you can find used.



Fatal Distraction

Sonja does many other things in non-book form, like installations & she also makes bunnies from angora and cashmere.









You can find her here:

Blog

and

website

and

shop