MAGIC PONY For Immediate Release

May 8, 2010

SONJ AHLERS
BOOK LAUNCH AND ART EXHIBITION

THE SELVES
Thursday May 13 6-9pm

Magic Pony
694 Queen St W, Toronto, ON, Canada
416.861.1684
contact@magic-pony.com

Magic Pony welcomes artist Sonja Ahlers for a special exhibition and
launch of her new book “The Selves”. Sonja will be hosting a special sign-
ing on Thursday May 13 6-9pm and a showcase of limited edition prints
will be on exhibition until May 25 at the Magic Pony Gallery.
Inside pages:

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 favoured 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 stick-
ers, greeting cards, magazine photos collected in collage framework,
complete with song lyrics hand-lettered in cursive script and heartbreak-
ing, melancholic water colors, 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’
visual remixes. With The Selves, the schizophrenic nature of an identity
foraged from modern cultural sources is laid bare.
Full-Color, 96 pages, 7 by 10 inches.

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.
- Kathleen Hanna

MAGIC PONY 694 QUEEN ST WEST, TORONTO ON, CANADA M6J 1E7 t: 416.861.1684 www.magic-pony.com