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This major survey exhibition provides an important glimpse into this under-recognized artist’s expansive output and ability to capture the cultural moment.

Photo courtesy Richmond Art Gallery

Sonja Ahlers’ Classification Crisis showcases three decades of deeply personal work at the RAG

By Richmond Sentinel

Published 2:07 PDT, Thu August 31, 2023

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From Sept. 9 to Nov. 5, Richmond Art Gallery presents Sonja Ahlers’ Classification Crisis. Over the last 30 years, Ahlers has been an influential voice for generations of feminists through her D.I.Y. approach to collage art, poetry, zines, mail art, and other publications. This exhibition presents an important and long overdue overview of Ahlers rich, eclectic practice. Highlights on view at the RAG will include Ahlers’ zines, poetry, installations, excerpts from her personal archive, and a decade-plus worth of works not previously shown until now.

“Classification Crisis follows Sonja’s career from Victoria to Vancouver to Whitehorse and back to Victoria, geographic moves that correspond with major shifts in her artistic practice,” says curator Godfre Leung. “In a way, Classification Crisis tells a story of art in Vancouver in the 2000s. This period of rapid urban growth and international recognition for both a handful of artists and the city itself brought about a hyper-competitive art scene that left a lot of very good artists behind. This exhibition highlights the importance of building communities and art infrastructures alike that are more humane and accessible, while bringing to the foreground a staggering body of work by a very important artist that has not received the recognition it deserves.”

Ahlers began her career in her hometown of Victoria in the ’90s as a collage artist—a medium she describes as “gathering and collecting and organizing and archiving.” Her work became influential within the feminist Riot Grrrl and zine subcultures. Her move to Vancouver in the early 2000s saw her shift to installation works and the creation of more idiosyncratic books. Her time in Vancouver was notably difficult, as she juggled an increasingly impenetrable art scene, personal difficulties, and the notoriously high cost of living.

In 2008, Ahlers moved to Whitehorse for a change of scenery, and found space to renew and refocus her artistic practice. She returned to Victoria in 2014 to care for her

ailing mother. This process of caring for her mother and her affairs led Ahlers to take stock of her own life’s work as an artist. Through her years in Whitehorse and Victoria, she continued to collect ephemera and produce art, which she archived in dozens of binders. Most of this remained private until the publication of her 2021 book Swan Song, described by Ahlers as “a goodbye to [her] former selves.”

Classification Crisis is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated publication of the same title, edited by curator Leung. Bound to become a collectors’ item, the book includes

contributions from such well-known feminist thinkers, writers, and friends as Rookie Mag founder Tavi Gevinson, musician Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre fame, and author Doretta Lau. Ahlers’ corpus is considered not only through the lens of biography and archiving, but also the disturbing lessons taught by the #MeToo

movement and vocabulary that has recently become common vernacular: grooming, negging, and gatekeeping. The publication also features a brand new artist book, Rabbit-Hole—which Ahlers vividly describes as a “feminist memoir/scrapbook/confessional commentary on the art world and my place within it.”

More details can be found at richmondartgallery.org/classification-crisis.