Weaving What Was Never Recorded, Providence-Based Artist Linda Sok

Linda Sok has exhibited extensively in institutions throughout Australia, North America, Europe, and South East Asia, including the Textile Art Center (NY, USA), Center for Craft  (NC, USA), Campbelltown Arts Centre (NSW, Australia), Institute of Modern Art (QLD, Australia), Gertrude Contemporary (VIC, Australia), Maloop (PHN, Cambodia) and the University of Copenhagen (CPH, Denmark). In 2024, she was awarded the Monash Room Emerging Artist Prize from the Australian Consulate in New York and the Dorner Prize through the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales Art & Design with First Class Honours and the University Medal in Fine Arts. Notable publications that have written about her work include Artist Profile, Art Guide, Art Spiel, Liminal Magazine and Running Dog. Linda has held residencies at Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts (NE, USA) and New York Foundation for the Arts Mentorship Program (NY, USA), and completed her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025.

Thank you for speaking with us, Linda. Could you begin by introducing your practice and how your Cambodian heritage and Australian upbringing inform it?

Growing up in Australia with a Cambodian family meant that I was constantly being pulled between two disparate cultures. One of my immediate family members, and the one of everyone else around me. I learnt about my parents’ culture and history through the rituals we practised, the customs they held, the way they spoke, and the stories they would tell me about the Khmer Rouge Regime and their escape. Whereas I always had food on the table and my most pressing worry was which outfit I wanted to wear, their lived experiences of walking through rivers filled with leeches felt far away from my own. Learning to see into both of these worlds made me question the ways in which a person can continue their culture when forced to migrate to a place completely unfamiliar to them in every way. How do I relate to a culture I wasn’t raised in, yet feel bound to by blood, language, and longing? What does it truly mean to be Cambodian / Australian / Cambodian-Australian / or somewhere in between?  

How do you understand your relationship to community—whether diasporic, artistic, or intergenerational? What forms of connection or care guide your approach?

I find the closest form of community in my family — there are echoes of my family throughout my practice, either explicitly or implicitly. Whether through their stories, materials, drawings, or my memory of them, they continually emerge in my work. I’ve also found community in the places I’ve lived, such as in Australia, New York, and Rhode Island. Having moved so much over the past few years has taught me that community doesn’t have to depend on being in the same place. It can still exist and grow, even from afar. The internet has helped me bridge those distances, which I’m really grateful for, especially as older generations, like my parents, would not have had that privilege. For me, connection and care are shaped through acts of remembering, sharing, and sustaining those bonds despite the distance.

Your work treats memory, personal stories, historical narratives, and even speculation as equally valid archives. What draws you to this expanded sense of what counts as “history” or “truth”?

History is made up of records, and those records are often made by people who chose to make a record, through the most Eurocentric notion of what a record can be. Typically, it is a piece of writing or an image, written in a European language and taken from an inevitably biased perspective. However, despite these biases, these narratives are thought of as a “truth” or “fact”. But what about the moments that live in between? Just because a moment was not recorded, does that make that moment not true? And just because it was recorded, does it mean that it is the only truth? Taking into consideration potential errors and misinterpretations meant that this idea of history is more complex than just what has been recorded. That’s when I began thinking about the counter archive, an archive that works to question these dominant narratives. What I’ve recognised is that these sources of authority, like archives, colonial records and museum collections, present themselves as having one “truth” when in reality there is always another side to the story. My practice works to give space for these other alternate ways of thinking or being, in order to question this colonial logic and ideology. 

The idea of upbringing as a “fracture” appears in your work as a point of entry into trauma and repair. How does this sense of rupture shape the role of ritual, weaving, and repetition in your practice?

Fractures give space for things that exist outside of these extremes to emerge. Embodying weaving and unravelling as methodologies has allowed for me to actively author my own personal narrative. Inherited trauma from the Khmer Rouge period has significantly shaped the way that my family moves in the world, and thus also the way that I was raised and also interact with the world. That rupture means that things have to be pieced together to be understood. I receive fragments of stories, memories, and recollections that I then work to develop a full narrative for. Even though these moments might be imagined, they allow for the gaps to fill, for wounds to be repaired, and for those memories to then become more complex and continuous than what was originally recorded. Rituals and repetition provide custom practices that allow for the continuation of culture, despite these fractures. I am drawn to how these repeated motions (whether through weaving, dyeing, and prayer) provide an anchor point when there has been so much turmoil and trauma. 

How do you choose your materials, and what kinds of emotional or cultural resonances do you hope they carry?

The materials I choose to employ hold specific resonances within my culture as well as upbringing. Silk is a material that I often use. Because it is one of the strongest naturally formed fibres found in nature, it becomes a medium that to me is representative of strength and resilience. The matrilineally handed-down practice of silk weaving faced near erasure due to the targeted persecution of weavers during the war, and so my choice to use it in my practice speaks to its power and resistance against loss. Salt is also a material that is particularly prevalent in my practice, as it is able to speak to notions of preservation. It holds antiseptic qualities, to cure, to heal, to add flavour or enhance. Simultaneously with this, it also stings an open wound, and yet it is also found in your sweat. It crystallises, it accumulates, it is exported, commodified, and it erodes. Sand is another material I use quite often in my practice, as it is often used in Cambodian rituals and celebrations, so the reverberations it carries are cultural ones. In addition to these, I’ve also been using air-dry clay, which is a medium that is quick to work with, and plastic raffia, a material that reminds me of my grandmother. Both of these materials connect personally to my childhood and family. The materials I use also feel universal and elemental, so despite having specific cultural and personal ties, I hope that many people will also be able to connect to these materials through their own entry points. 

Do you have any advice that you would offer to others?

Don’t be afraid of failure – whether it’s applying for that grant or trying out a new medium. You will always surprise yourself if you just try. Sometimes it’s just to rule out that the technique you tried is not for you, that is still new knowledge you gain just by giving it a go. 

text & photo courtesy of Linda Sok

• Website:  https://www.linda-sok.com/
• Instagram: @lendasock