Sonja Ahlers’ artist book, Swan Song, was recently released by Conundrum Press. Composed from collected cut-outs over the years, Swan Song accesses subconscious narratives that accumulate and reveal themselves over time. In the next ReIssue, Ahlers will be interviewed on her practice by archivist/librarian Alexandra Alisauskas and critic/curator Godfre Leung.
Images:
All images courtesy of the artist, 2021.
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 ’90s, Ahlers has worked primarily in 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), and The Selves (Drawn & Quarterly, 2010), and was a key contributor to Rookie Mag from 2011 to 2015. Swan Song (Conundrum Press, 2021) is Ahlers’ fourth book.
