Linda Sok

Linda Sok is a second-generation descendant of survivors of the Khmer Rouge Regime, a genocidal period in Cambodia’s history which forced her family to flee Cambodia. By accessing fragments of Cambodia's traumatic past, Sok attempts to recontextualise lost traditions and culture to allow living descendants to process the history through a decolonialised contemporary lens. She sees her practice as a biomythography, positioning historical events, cultural objects, and personal and familial stories, as archives from which she can begin to build a narrative for Cambodia’s and her own past and future. 

Sok graduated from the University of New South Wales Art & Design in Australia with a degree in Fine Arts and was awarded First Class Honours and the University Medal. Sok has exhibited internationally in institutions such as Center for Craft (North Carolina), Textile Arts Center (New York), Multicultural Arts Center (Massachusetts), Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne), Artspace (Sydney), Casula Powerhouse Art Center (Sydney), and Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane).

16 | Linda Sok, When will you be home?, 2023, silk, rayon, dye, metal trinkets. 86 x 38 cm. $1690.

Linda’s work reclaims the fading tradition of Cambodian silk and pidan weaving and hol (ikat) dyeing techniques, touching on the tradition whilst also offering a nuanced way of approaching the practice as an act of healing from familial and cultural trauma. When will you be home? centers on imagery of Linda’s family, taken from photos and communicated to her through social media. It investigates the generative outcomes of colliding screen printing and weaving as methodologies to explore her family's and her own migration, displaced diaspora, intergenerational trauma, material and metaphysical memory, and healing in the present day. Everyday rituals practiced by her family are portrayed in the prints, elevating them to the sacred status that the pidans were traditionally held.