Germaine Koh Artist
Vancouver, British Columbia
Video by Kyle Armstrong (Dropper Productions)

Germaine Koh is an artist and organizer whose work ranges widely across media. Her work adapts familiar objects, actions, and spaces to create situations that look at the significance of communal experiences and the connections between people, technology, and natural systems. Her ongoing projects include Home Made Home, an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing, and League, a participatory project using play as a form of creative practice. In recent years, she has served as the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence and as the Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia, and for the 2023-24 academic year she will be a Shadbolt Fellow at Simon Fraser University. Koh has received the Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award and been a finalist for the Sobey Art Award. After years without a fixed address, Koh is now based on the West Coast, in traditional Coast Salish territories. 

Germaine Koh’s website

“Over the last 30 years, Germaine has changed the terms of Canadian contemporary art, expanding our consciousness of what art can be, and making perceptible the invisible systems that connect us in everyday experience. [...] Germaine’s art demonstrates enduring interest in human systems and interactions, and the materials and technologies which link these to both natural and built environments.” 

Nominators: Sarah Cook, independent curator, University of Glasgow, Joni Low, independent curator and critic, Simon Fraser University, and Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University 

“Germaine has changed the terms of Canadian contemporary art, expanding our consciousness of what art can be.”

Selected works

Thousands of ball bearings lie scattered on a dark, glossy floor in an empty room. Floor-to-ceiling windows offer a view of a parking lot.
Two young people wearing boxing gloves and helmets engage in boxing while standing on a concrete pad near a ramp to underground parking.
A black, 1970s-era telephone sits on a white surface. Its face shows a green LED display illuminated with the words "Pick up handset."
Sections of black tubes hang between equally spaced metal stanchions that sit in a row on a gallery floor. A black box is attached to a wall.
The entire floor of a white-walled gallery space is covered in a variety of growing wild plants of the type found in untended places.
Three men in reflective vests strain to move a large boulder lying on the pavement of a city street as bystanders watch.
About 15 people in casual clothing stand at close quarters in a room. Many of them have arms outstretched to the sides.
Six people in athletic clothing are shown playing on a sports field. Some have both hands behind their backs, holding tennis balls.
A tidy stack of straight logs, with diameters ranging from about eight to 25 centimetres, is seen on a gallery floor.
A photo shows a woman inside a phonebooth-sized metal structure, interacting with people outside through an open window.
A photo shows a small house built on a trailer.

Discover the 2023 Winners

Know someone who deserves a GGArts award? Deadline: June 1

For more information or to submit a nomination, visit this page.