November 6, 2025 – April 12, 2026
Linda Rotua Sormin: Uncertain Ground
November 2025 – April 12, 2026
Special Exhibition Hall. 3rd Floor
Included with admission. Free for Gardiner Members.
Linda Rotua Sormin: Uncertain Ground is the culmination of over 20 years of remarkable exploration and innovation, bringing together clay, sculpture, video, sound, hand-cut watercolour painting, and digital fabrication in a multi-sensory environment where roosters, tigers, dragons, and sacred texts serve as portals into ancient knowledge. The exhibition asks how life in the modern, cosmopolitan city can coexist with memories and experiences of our ancestral traditions.
Raised in Canada and Thailand, artist Linda Rotua Sormin has emerged as a leading voice in sculpture with her fearless, monumental structures. Continually pushing clay beyond its limits, Sormin’s web-like forms burst through the boundaries of the medium, literally breaking apart and re-convening in new forms. Colonial artifacts, everyday kitsch, and fragments from the artist’s studio floor dangle and nestle within the latticework.
Linda Rotua Sormin discusses her exhibition at the Gardiner Museum.
Recorded on November 4, 2025.
In her first solo museum exhibition and largest project to date, Sormin delves into her lineage among the Batak people of Sumatra in the Indonesian archipelago, exploring how images and ideas of her ancestors have, sometimes unwittingly, infused her artistic practice. She studied traditional Batak divination books, available to her only in European museum collections, with access strictly controlled, as well as the script and spoken language of her ancestors. Building on her research, Sormin weaves a rich family history of shamanic and other spiritual practices fragmented by colonialism, Christianization, and diaspora.
The exhibition unfolds on three levels: a central raised platform evokes a volcanic lake with an underworld of mythical beasts and coded divination texts; a tangle of precarious ceramic sculptures suggests an earthly middle ground inhabited by humans; and a suspended projection screen references a celestial realm of spirits and birds. The result is an environment that feels alive and in motion, offering audiences an encounter that is both visceral and contemplative.
Please note: This exhibition contains a video projection with flashing lights.
Click here for more accessibility information.
About the Artist
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
Exhibition Programs
Join us for special exhibition programs including talks, tours, and more!
Uncertain Ground: Poetry Night
Mar 19 2026 @ 5:30 pm
Uncertain Ground: Curator Tour with Sequoia Miller
Apr 7 2026 @ 6:00 pm
Artist Talk and Reception
Nov 6 2025 @ 6:00 pm
Free Celebration Weekend
Nov 8 & 9 2025
Curator Tour with Sequoia Miller
Dec 9 2025 @ 6:00 pm
Family Recipes: Multimedia Illustration Workshop
Jan 27 2026 @ 5:30 pm
Family Recipes: Multimedia Illustration Workshop
Feb 17 2026 @ 5:30 pm
Curator Tour with Sequoia Miller
Feb 26 2026 @ 6:00 pm
Presenting Sponsors
Thanks To
Official Exhibition Paint Sponsor
Media Partners
Accessibility
- The exhibition is located on the 3rd floor and is accessible by elevator
- The installation includes a platform with a wheelchair access ramp
- Visitors can expect some noise and flashing lights from a video display
- A gallery attendant will be available at the entrance to the exhibition
- The exhibition text is accessible in large-print format upon request
