Germaine Koh is an artist and organizer whose work ranges widely across media. Her work adapts familiar objects, everyday actions, and common spaces to create situations that look at the significance of communal experiences and the connections between people, technology, and natural systems. Her organizing work focuses on developing community agency, especially through DIY making.

Prior to joining UBC in 2024, Koh was a laureate of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts in 2023 and a 2023-24 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. She served as the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence in 2018-20 and as the 2021 Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia.

Koh has previously taught at the Universities of Ottawa, Guelph, Victoria, British Columbia, and at Emily Carr University of Art+ Design. She earned an M.F.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York; a B.F.A. and a B.A. in Theory and History of Art from University of Ottawa; and an Associate Diploma in Building Construction Technology from British Columbia Institute of Technology. She is based on the west coast in traditional Coast Salish territories.

Current projects:
— Slow Fashion: Circular Textiles, Sustainable Fibre UBC Research Excellence Cluster (https://slowfashion.ubc.ca) and Slow Fashion Season (https://slowfashionseason.com)
— Fabric of Campus Fibre Garden (https://livinglabs.ubc.ca/projects/fabric-campus-fibre-garden)
— Critical Play Lab within UBC Pop Culture research cluster (https://pop-culture.arts.ubc.ca/critical-play-lab/)
— League participatory project focused on play as a form of creative practice
— Home Made Home, an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing
— the Hemlock Micro Studio rural artist residency centered on land-based and sustainability practices.