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.
“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.”
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