Linda Sok: Reincarnations of an altar cloth

Reincarnations of an altar cloth presents a selection of works from the ongoing series Deities in Temples by Cambodian-Australian artist Linda Sok. 

Delving into the matrilineal practice of Pidan, Deities in Temples presents re-imaginings of lost, stolen, collected, and destroyed silk weavings. Pidan, a poly-chromatic weft silk weaving tradition, faced near erasure due to the targeted persecution of weavers during the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Regime. This resulted in a scarcity of ancestral weaving knowledge. Through this body of work, Sok engages with decolonial practices and methodologies to reclaim fragments of her Cambodian heritage.

Sok collaborated with family members to produce this body of work, inspired by descriptions written on museum registration cards. Found in the archives of the National Museum of Cambodia, these cards are the only documents verifying the existence of the original weavings. Using both imagination and memory, the colonial practices of cataloguing and record keeping by French archivists are reclaimed by Sok to produce new ways to connect to lost heritage. Drawings, paintings, and sketches by her family were compiled to serve as the foundation for a new visual narrative. These elements are interwoven to create this body of work, in a deliberate process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction.

Reincarnations of an altar cloth is a Campbelltown Arts Centre exhibition presented in partnership with Murray Art Museum Albury. The exhibition includes new work commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre that expands the visual narrative of the ongoing series.

About the artist

Linda Sok’s practice is rooted in her Cambodian cultural heritage. She considers her upbringing in Australia as a fracture through which she can begin to unwind and untangle personal and historical traumas. Distance and absence become inciting moments through which her practice can emerge as acts of weaving, rituals, and material translations. By positioning memory, historical and personal stories, speculations, and the imagination as equally reliable archives, she hopes to blur the lines between fact and fiction; to leave space to allow for the questioning of authority and authenticity inside the logic of colonisation. Materials such as silk, salt, sand, dye, and air-dry clay feature prominently throughout her sculptural, fibre-based practice.

Sok has exhibited extensively throughout institutions in Australia, North America, Europe, and South East Asia, including the Textile Art Center (NY, USA), Center for Craft (NC, USA), Artspace (NSW, Australia), Institute of Modern Art (QLD, Australia), Gertrude Contemporary (VIC, Australia), Maloop (PHN, Cambodia) and 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. Linda completed her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Linda Sok would like to thank her mother, father, aunts, uncle, and sisters for their contributions to this project.