Accessing ancestral memory with Linda Sok

Linda Sok is a Cambodian-Australian artist whose practice is guided by her Khmer cultural heritage. In particular, she investigates the culturally and personally significant event – the Khmer Rouge Regime – which forced her family’s migration to Australia.

Connecting to past narratives and traditions, she attempts to contemporise these practices and shift the legacy of Cambodia from one focused on genocide to one of healing. Currently, her practice navigates the complexities of occupying the space between her ancestral homeland and the land on which she currently resides.

Stories from her familial and cultural heritage significantly influence her method of representing confrontational notions of trauma and genocide. Her practice posits a means for the living descendants to approach and understand their past’s ancestral trauma, and access lost traditions. With a particular focus on cultural objects, rituals, traditions and their materiality, her practice often manifests in sculptural installations.

Linda Sok. Courtesy the artist.

Linda graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of New South Wales Art & Design in 2018 and was awarded the University Medal. In 2019 she was a finalist in the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship. Linda has exhibited in galleries and institutions across Sydney, including Artspace, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Firstdraft, Peacock Gallery and Auburn Arts Centre, Wellington St Projects and Seventh Gallery. She was also recently a resident of the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Creative Studio Program.

This conversation took place in November 2020 on the occasion of Linda’s Firstdraft exhibition Corporeal/Spiritual. Interview by Yuki Kawakami, Co-Director, Firstdraft.

Yuki Kawakami: In your earlier works, Transmission/Translation (2017) and Come Back Home II (2017) you adopt electronics and hardware, such as a satellite dish, television and hardwired transmissions. In the last 3 years, there has been a significant shift in your material practice and you now work predominantly with soft, organic fibres such as silks, fabrics and paper. What inspired you to change your material practice? And how has this departure allowed you to further convey the personal and historical narratives in your installations?

Linda Sok: The framework from which I was working previously was strongly shaped by my previous degree in science, as well as the teacher I had at art school. I always found that my practice split into two different areas; the material/technological side, where I would push materials and technology to their limits, and the conceptual side, where I was looking more towards my Khmer culture and identity as a descendant of Cambodian migrants.

I’ve slowly transitioned away from that technological side as I left university my practice began to look more into my cultural side and more towards pushing the limits of the materials related to Khmer cultural practices and rituals. It has meant that I’ve been able to channel that need to experiment with materials to those that are connected to my own personal familial narrative.

I think that my parents enjoy when I work with materials that are familiar to them, as it gives them a way to access the work. That element becomes quite important as they don’t often understand why I make my work and why it’s important. The materials I use often relate to the ways in which I understand the practices related to them and provide a way for me to process my experiences of culture on my own terms.

Linda Sok, Transmission/Translation, 2017, installation view, 541 Art Space, Sydney. Courtesy the artist.

Linda Sok, Come Back Home II, 2017, installation view, Kudos Gallery, Sydney. Courtesy the artist.

Linda Sok, Transmission/Translation, 2017, installation view (detail), 541 Art Space, Sydney. Courtesy the artist.

“I’ve been able to channel that need to experiment with materials to those that are connected to my own personal familial narrative.”

YK: In your current exhibition Corporeal/Spiritual, the handmade paper constructions created from Joss paper have a fleshy, skin-like texture with subtle flickers of gold. Could you elaborate on why you chose this material and tell us a bit more about your art-making process?

LS: Joss paper, also known as spirit money, is a material that is made of what looks like handmade paper with a piece of gold or silver leaf on top. It’s a material that I’ve been familiar with since childhood through witnessing rituals my parents would perform with it, primarily during Ancestor Day ceremonies. During these ceremonies, the papers were burnt as an offering to the deceased and follows on from the Buddhist belief that fire and burning were the means through which you could transition from the current life to the next.

The process that I applied to the Joss paper speaks directly to the treatment of the human remains in Cambodia. Instead of being allowed to undergo the process of cremation, the bones of the Khmer Rouge victims remain on display in monuments around Cambodia. This act of holding on to the bodies is what I’ve chosen to do with the Joss paper. Instead of burning them, I’ve put them through the process being torn up, soaked in water, made into a pulp which I then blend and re-configure into the fleshy forms that you see in the exhibition. For me it was a kind of cathartic process that indicates the violence that had been inflicted on the victims as well as the re-formation of the bodies in a confronting, perturbed way.

Linda Sok, Corporeal/Spiritual, 2020, Joss paper, gold leaf, installation view, Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Jessica Maurer. Courtesy the artist.

“For me it was a kind of cathartic process that indicates the violence that had been inflicted on the victims as well as the re-formation of the bodies in a confronting, perturbed way.”

YK: How has the architecture of the gallery informed your installation?

LS: What drew me in most about the space was the curvature of the wall – to me it looked like a shrine and so I was immediately drawn to that and what I could do with a space that had a shrine built into it. I often create installations that can act as spaces where contemplation and memorialisation can happen, and thus that curve in the wall became an important aspect of the installation. With the smaller paper forms I created, I started off thinking about how you would go about interacting with them and thought of scattering them around the space, or laying them down on the ground in a line to suggest a procession that made its way up towards the shrine.

When installation day came, I ended up being really drawn towards hanging them on the walls. I think I chose to do this because to me I saw the paper forms as bodies, almost like each was a spirit residing in the space. Having them on the walls rather than on the floor made you confront them in a different way. Different from the way that the piles of human remains are placed in Cambodia. Their placement on the walls were more considered and careful, allowing them to connect with one another and also forcing the audience to confront them directly; rather than seeing them en masse, you see each individual as they are.

Linda Sok, Corporeal/Spiritual, 2020, Joss paper, gold leaf, installation view (detail), Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Jessica Maurer. Courtesy the artist.

YK: As an early-career Australian-Cambodian artist who grew up in Western Sydney, how do you think the art world can become more accessible and inclusive for young people?

LS: I didn’t have many experiences or opportunities to connect to art around Western Sydney. My first experience in an art gallery was in high school on a visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Going into university I always felt like an outsider, as if the art world would always reject me, but I soon saw so many people who looked like me – people of colour making art about their culture. That was what really inspired me to begin making art about my own family’s history.

I think art can sometimes be quite daunting to approach, and I think that with my work I am constantly working to make sure that people can access it somehow. I often use really beautiful and tactile materials, to be able to get people to engage with my art on some sort of level. They are also materials that are familiar to people. I think it is often that interest in art that is transferred through knowing someone in the arts, and so I’ve been encouraging my family and friends who are not in the arts to come to art openings, and just explaining my work and the work of the people around me in an accessible way. Hopefully seeing someone like themselves in the art world will encourage a young person to pursue it as well.

Linda Sok, Corporeal/Spiritual, 2020, Joss paper, gold leaf, installation view (detail), Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Jessica Maurer. Courtesy the artist.

“I often create installations that can act as spaces where contemplation and memorialisation can happen.”

Linda Sok, Corporeal/Spiritual, 2020, Joss paper, gold leaf, installation view (detail), Firstdraft, Sydney. Photo: Jessica Maurer. Courtesy the artist.

“I have been working on a project called Salt Water Deluge that centres around healing and preservation of culture following the Khmer Rouge Regime. The art of silk weaving, a matrilineal tradition, was one of many art forms targeted that came close to being erased by the Khmer Rouge perpetrators.”

Linda Sok, Salt Water Deluge, 2020. Courtesy the artist.

YK: Who or what are you listening to, watching, reading? How do you stay connected – or how do you disconnect – in these times?

LS: I’ve had some great books recommended to me by a friend – A Year Of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks, which is set during the Plague times, feels quite pertinent for this moment. Most recently I read To the River by Olivia Laing, which speaks to a project that I’ve been working on that has to do with looking at the histories embedded within our waterways and thinking through ways for me to connect to the landscape through my lens as a Cambodian-Australian. I’ve also been listening to the band Deftones, which just always seems to hit me in the right way.

“It’s not a conscious choice, it’s a recognition of something that was already there.”

YK: What are you working on now? Do you have any exhibitions coming up?

LS: I have been working on a project called Salt Water Deluge that centres around healing and preservation of culture following the Khmer Rouge Regime. The art of silk weaving, a matrilineal tradition, was one of many art forms targeted that came close to being erased by the Khmer Rouge perpetrators. In defiance of this, the project sources silk fabrics from Cambodian artisans practiced in the art of silk weaving and submerges them into a saline solution made from salt and water collected from riverways and water sources. The work will be shown as part of Cementa Festival in 2021, but I am also looking to expand the project further to collect water from different waterways around Australia as well as overseas.

Linda Sok, Salt Water Deluge, 2020. Courtesy the artist.

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