Violetta Lapinski
Germaine Koh is what some people would call a “DIY” conceptual artist. Renowned for her ephemeral and abstract-driven artworks, her artistic practice over thirty-plus years continually evolves, her oeuvre is not finite; the works convert and adapt within contemporary environments reflecting the artist’s ongoing concerns with innovation and transformation. An experienced curator in her own right, Koh has worked extensively on a variety of diverse projects around Canada, the USA, Mexico, Europe, Asia and Australia. Koh’s latest exhibition, Processes (November 24, 2021–January 14, 2022) situates two ongoing works marked by changes under the climate of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Koh possesses an extraordinary generosity and her aptitude for making connections through her art practice has extended to public spaces, people, natural systems, and technology. As the 2021 Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia, in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, Koh has initiated and organized a variety of physically distanced art projects on campus, hosted workshops, taught graduate and undergraduate courses, conducted studio visits, and appeared as guest speaker. Under the tutelage of Professor Althea Thauberger for the course VISA 475: Exhibition Theory and Practice, Koh shared her practice with the student curators. We were fortunate to discuss and actively explore Koh’s extraordinary ongoing works while developing an intimate understanding of her creative contribution and aesthetic.
The exhibition Processes came about through this collaboration. Koh participated regularly in our course discussions, describing her ongoing artwork methodologies and cycles. As I listened to Koh, I proposed that a second Koh exhibition could be realized in tandem with the VISA 475 class of Koh’s The Haunting II exhibition, offering related opportunities for experiential learning in addition to her position as Koerner Artist in Residence at UBC. Koh’s ongoing, time-based art pieces (works that were initiated to continue ongoing interactions, processes, and iterations) were adaptable and ideally suited to be installed quickly and easily, offering opportunities for experiential learning. I proposed this thought to Professor Thauberger and Koh, with the intent to highlight the rare opportunity to show Koh’s artworks in Vancouver, while also re-activating the student-run exhibition space on campus, the Hatch Art Gallery. The gallery was sitting empty (since March 16, 2020, when UBC campus closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic). With both parties in agreement, I approached the Alma Mater Student Society (AMS), which oversees and operates the Hatch Art Gallery space, and the concept was approved.
The two works chosen for the Processes exhibition include Koh’s Accord of Wood, begun in 2013, and Fête, ongoing since 1997. Distinct yet interlinked, the two pieces convey characteristics of continuity, displaying aspects of two natural, organic living materials chopped in mid-growth, yet not at the end of life. The works specifically acknowledge processes of transformation, accumulation, archiving, and administration of commonplace materials and how they recirculate into new forms of artistic intervention as they transcend traditional conceptions of art. Processes highlights the artist’s keen observational skills referencing how existence shifts and changes over time. In this show, Koh brings together the resulting conditions experienced in a human life cycle (her own), in parallel with the non-human life cycle of pine trees. Historically measurable and categorized, these series of changes gesture to absent narratives, critical social commentary, the fragile environment, and Indigenous territories.
The voluminous work Accord of Wood, embarked upon in 2013, quietly acknowledges local and global environmental conditions and Indigenous title. These logs of infested mountain pine beetle were removed from their original forest location near Kamloops, British Columbia, part of the unceded ancestral territory of the Secwepemc people. An interpretive work, it traces the invisible processes of its movements from the forest to the controlled gallery environment through associative links. Accompanied by administrative agreements (accords) and transactional documents necessary for moving the wood, the logs have incurred multiple processes from forest to harvest, and then custom milled into lumber. Koh too embraces playfulness in her artworks. Naming the piece Accord of Wood, Koh alludes to the 4 x 4 x 8-foot cord of wood on display. The wood has been exhibited once before, in a different iteration, and with each physical move of the piece, Koh reconfigures the material, recycling the wood into a new artform. The wood exists regardless of interruptions, a controlled commodity at risk of expiration. Strapped together for this exhibition, the wood serves as benches to encourage gathering, dialogue, contemplation, and connections.
Fête, originally realized in 1997, is installed as a procession of exquisite garlands wrapped around three of the gallery walls. They are a growing collection of the artist’s own hair, cut at different intervals and hand-sewn into swags like tinsel. Rarely exhibited, Fête pays homage to the activation of a woman as she ages, not to shrink from but to glorify in this inexorable process. The thirteen swags harken rites of passage while recording past and present events in Koh’s life. The most recent hair sash is from 2021, consisting of Koh’s hair, cut and prepared only days before the exhibition opening. The individual swags of hair present differently and are ordered chronologically. The year of the cut is discreetly embroidered on satin ribbon fastened with binding to the left of the swag. Each swag evokes an occasion or communicates a story; the cut hair is a timeline representing the regeneration process that begins with the next haircut. The threadlike strands of hair collectively trace Koh’s journey of personal change and development through various lengths, widths, colours and textures. Fête seeks to reject the negative societal notion of the female aging process, declaring that the staged decorative hair wreaths are a powerful celebration.
Unexpected synergies developed during the exhibition which ran from November 24, 2021, to January 14, 2022. As the first in-person show to be exhibited in the Hatch Art Gallery since March 2020, Processes presented new forms of communication experimentation while practicing pandemic protocols. The exhibition functioned as a meeting place for pedagogy in hosting lectures, served as a platform for public discourse on decolonization, the environment, inclusivity and diversity, welcomed a Pacific Assistance Dog in training, and provided an immersive gallery experience to countless UBC students, faculty, and members of the public. The exhibition also welcomed gallery viewers to an opening event presenting the opportunity to directly engage with Germaine Koh in real time (remotely on a laptop) surrounded by her pieces Accord of Wood and Fête. As a whole, the exhibition Processes is characterized by an atmosphere of pensiveness, re-invention, and critical reflection, offering insights to understanding Indigenous issues in Accord of Wood while re-framing perspectives on aging in Fête.
Violetta Lapinski
Curator
Bachelor of Arts, Art History (2021)
Acknowledgements and Thanks
The University of British Columbia is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
I would like to thank Germaine Koh for graciously offering her works for the exhibition, and for her encouragement and incredible support; Professor Althea Thauberger, who introduced Germaine Koh to VISA 475, for providing her expertise, generous support and contributions at every turn; Greg Gibson, Undergraduate Advisor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, for his enthusiasm, endless support, professionalism and creative eye; and the UBC Alma Mater Society for allowing me the space and time, and for providing resources to pursue this exhibition in the AMS Hatch Art Gallery.
The Koerner Artist in Residence Program in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory is made possible by the generous support of the Koerner Foundation and a private BC-based foundation.
Sincere thanks to those who contributed to the realization of this exhibition:
Art History Students’ Association (AHSA)
Ece Asitanelioglu
Anna Be
Lauren Benson, AMS Vice President
Amelia Cheng, Graphic Designer
Maddy de Jager
Kirandeep Dhaliwal
Anneke Dresselhuis
Ben Du, AMS Associate Vice President, Administration
Zoë Eshan
Cole Evans, AMS President
Haya Faruqui
Josephine Lee
Francisc León Lozano Rivera, AMS Building Assistant Manager
Eric Lowe, AMS Senior Communications & Marketing Manager
Vince Markarian, AMS Building Operations Manager
Helena Mott
Joanne Pickford, AMS Administrative Guru Extraordinaire
Deb Pickman, Special Projects, UBC Arts & Culture District
Tatiana Povoroznyuk
Nancy Shen
Joe Salmon
Yasmine Semeniuk, AHSA President
Jasmina Simsone
Joshua Steinhauer
AJ Takhar
Anastasjia Tomic
UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory
VISA 475 class colleagues
Visual Art Students’ Association (VASA)
Maggie Wong, VASA President
It was truly a pleasure to work with such a dedicated group of people.