The Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory is excited to announce the appointments of Germaine Koh and Karice Mitchell as assistant professors (tenure-track) in visual art as of July 1, 2024.
Both have been in the department in other roles. Koh has been the Koerner Artist-in-Residence and a sessional lecturer. Mitchell was a lecturer from 2021 and served as AHVA Gallery committee chair. We are thrilled for them to continue building on their previous contributions to the department.
Head and professor Joseph Monteyne extends his warm welcome, “I am pleased and honoured to welcome Germaine Koh and Karice Mitchell to the department as tenure track assistant professors. They are both known to us through their productive engagements with the department in previous roles, and I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that I am excited to be able to support them and watch them grow into their new roles as creative practitioners, researchers, and teachers. Germaine will bring a wealth of interdisciplinary collaborations between art and technology to the department, and Karice, who was hired through the auspices of the Black Faculty Cohort Hiring Initiative, will continue to decolonize the photography curriculum and engage students with a Black feminist theorical perspective on representations of the body. Please join me in welcoming them!”
Germaine Koh is an artist and organizer whose work adapts familiar objects, everyday actions, and common spaces to look at the connections between people, technology, and natural systems.
Koh’s research-creation projects exemplify a mode of creative practice based in deliberate interdisciplinarity. Her work as an educator embodies a generalist approach that values the efforts of dedicated amateurs, traditional and vernacular bodies of knowledge, D.I.Y. ethics, iterative play, and experiential learning.
She was the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence (2018–20) and a Shadbolt Fellow at Simon Fraser University (2023–24). She was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2023.
“I am honoured to be joining UBC's esteemed Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory. I look forward to working within a department filled with respected colleagues and contributing my particular subject-matter experience to the curriculum. On the research side, I will be bringing to UBC several interdisciplinary research-creation projects, for which I hope to find productive connections with folks in diverse disciplines across the university, and to create opportunities for student training.”
Karice Mitchell is a photo-based installation artist whose practice uses found imagery and digital manipulation to engage with issues relating to the representation of the Black female body in pornography and popular culture. Her work seeks to re-contextualize pre-existing images to reimagine the possibilities for Black womanhood and sexuality detached from the white gaze and patriarchy. She received her BFA at York University in 2019 and her MFA at the University of Waterloo in June 2021.
“After being a part of the AHVA department for three years, I am excited to take on this new role that prioritizes research from a decolonial Black theoretical framework. I am grateful to continue contributing to such a vibrant community of peers and I look forward to working with undergraduate and graduate students.”
