Germaine Koh, FADs art space, Tokyo
review by Makiko HARA
BT journal, vol. 55, no. 855, May 2003, p. 216-217
translation by Shinobu AKIMOTO

Germaine Koh is a “multi-tasking” artist whose activities range from artmaking to curation to critique and of late, operation of a gallery in her own apartment.  Based in Toronto, she remains mobile and flexible, travelling world-wide and undertaking a variety of site-specific projects at diverse venues — at galleries, in empty stores, on the streets and so on. 

This time (at FADs art space), she presented her Homemaking series, which she has been carrying out at various places since 2001.  Within the gallery space she created an ”invisible” architectural space with a life-size spider web and also showed a video work. Almost unnoticeable, the spider web made of linen string occupies the corner of the room. The point lies not in its formal beauty, but in its “inconspicuousness.” Referencing the homeless who cohabit our urban life, the artist represents territory-marking as an animal instinct, and addresses the possibility of inhabiting the “crevices” of the city.  In so doing, she discloses the hidden structure, function, and human nature that reside in these in-between spaces of our urban life.

Her video endlessly projects a generic grey carpet from an angle as if shot aerially. Germaine’s “technique of intervening in the cracks of urban life” embodies the lifestyle of a contemporary artist who travels all over the world with one suitcase and quietly reveals the multilayered structures concealed in the daily life of the visited city.