Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Linda Rotua Sormin moved to Canada with her family at the age of five. Her sculptures and site-responsive installations embody the vulnerable and fragmentary nature of her diasporic experience. Since the early 2000s, she has established a distinct visual and material language, using raw clay, fired ceramics, found objects, and interactive methods.

Sormin’s research and writing cast light on how her work has always been influenced—though at times unwittingly—by cultural practices in her family histories rooted in Thailand, China, and Indonesia. Advocating for decolonial approaches in art and education since the early 1990s when she worked in community development in Laos, she has since taught visual art at Emily Carr University, Rhode Island School of Design, Sheridan College, Alfred University, and currently New York University, where she is a tenured Professor of Studio Art and Head of Ceramics.

Her work is included in private and public collections including the permanent collections of the Gardiner Museum (Toronto, ON, Canada), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, MA, USA), Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC, USA), and Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK).

Sormin lives and works in New York City.

Photo: David Schmitz