Adelene Koh approaches bookbinding as both a technical discipline and a sculptural language, translating the structures of traditional books into forms that can exist beyond their original function. Trained in fine bookbinding and conservation, the Singaporean artist is based in Taiwan, where she runs the studio dddots. Her practice combines paper, thread, sewing, folding, and structural precision, treating each material as part of a carefully constructed visual system.
A defining aspect of Koh’s work is her attention to components that usually remain subordinate to the overall architecture of a book. Sewing techniques associated with historical English bookbinding, some dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, become a means of creating repetition, rhythm, color, and independent sculptural structures. Her knowledge as a conservator also informs this approach, giving her an unusually detailed understanding of how materials age, connect, bend, and withstand tension. Rather than treating traditional craft as a fixed vocabulary, Koh extracts its underlying mechanisms and reorganizes them through contemporary forms.
This combination of conservation, craftsmanship, and experimentation gives her sculptures a distinctive tension between fragility and structure. Paper can become architectural, while embroidery thread shifts from a functional element into a prominent graphic and spatial device. The LOEWE Foundation describes Koh as an artist exploring the book as a sculptural form through touch, rhythm, and space, while her 2026 selection as one of the Craft Prize finalists further positioned her practice within contemporary craft. Her work demonstrates how meticulous knowledge of an established technique can generate new possibilities without severing its connection to material history.
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