Germaine Koh - ‘Drawing Connections’

Germaine Koh's work ranges widely across media, adapting familiar objects, actions and spaces to create situations that look at the significance of communal experiences, and that encourage 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. Koh's exhibition history includes the BALTIC Centre, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Para/Site Art Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein, The Power Plant, The British Museum, the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, Plug In ICA, and the Liverpool, Sydney and Montreal biennials. Her work is in many public collections including Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Ottawa Art Gallery, and Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. After years without fixed address, Koh is now based on the west coast of Canada in traditional Coast Salish territories. https://germainekoh.com   

Drawing Connections is an ongoing series of sketches Koh draws of people in public places. The sketches minimally capture activities, habits, gestures, and features that might seem commonplace, but combine in unique and recognizable personalities and types. These are placed in trading-card sleeves as if to represent characters in a game or larger system. They mark moments of communion between strangers, and reveal our vulnerability and connection to each other through our communal systems and in collective space.

The Drawing Connections drawings here are ink on paper, either 3x4 or 7x5 inches, including plastic sleeves.