Make Art Like Me

Sonja Ahlers

September 6 to October 5, 2024

Arising indirectly but inarguably from her seminal 2000 Rogue Art/Deluge exhibition Everything I Own Is In This Room (aka The Possibility of Overcoming Negative Thought) Victoria-based polymath Sonja Ahlers’ Make Art Like Me allows us entrée into a life/work that is multivalent, intertwined and recombinant, comprising words, images, objects and actions. These two process-based installations, separated by almost a quarter century, several incarnations, provinces (and one territory) act as shapeshifting bookends to Ahlers’ 2023 survey Classification Crisis. Make Art Like Me is an immersive environment in the Deluge space with the artist herself creating epilogues and forwards to her past and future works, independent of institutional oversight or curatorial interference.

Sonja Ahlers is a visual artist and poet based in Victoria, on the unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. Since the early 1990s, Ahlers has worked primarily in zines, book and book-adjacent formats, in a medium that she calls visual poetry. She is the author of Temper, Temper and Fatal Distraction (Insomniac Press, 1998 and 2004), The Selves (Drawn & Quarterly, 2010), Swan Song (Conundrum Press, 2021). She was a key contributor to Rookie from 2011 to 2015. In 2023, a major survey of her work, Classification Crisis, was co-published by Conundrum Press and the Richmond Art Gallery in conjunction with a 30-year retrospective. 

Sonja Ahlers in conversation with Deluge curator Deborah de Boer

Make Art Like Me Hands-On Workshop

Sunday, September 22, 2–5pm @ Deluge

As part of Make Art Like Me, Sonja Ahlers will lead a DIY Zine/Collage workshop. Participants can speak with the artist about her work and exhibition in the convivial environment of the Deluge gallery space while imagining and constructing their own projects. Although this workshop is free, participants must pre-register and it is limited to 20 individuals. All materials for this literary and aesthetic adventure are provided, with the exception of scissors—BYOS please!—and you may bring your own source materials if you wish. Music and light refreshments will be provided.

To register, click on the workshop link below and “purchase” the free product so we have your information. You will receive a confirmation.