Linda Sormin

Linda Sormin explores fragility, upheaval, migration, survival and change through sculpture and site-responsive installations. Her use of found objects, hand-drawn images and raw clay gives form to her family’s diasporic experience, paying homage to her ancestors, while providing a voice for her own story of displacement. Sormin’s sculptures create non-linear narratives, entwining histories and cultural references, revealing layers of personal archaeology. 

Sormin deconstructs her training in traditional ceramic methods to defy values such as “wholeness” and “purity”, pushing the limits of her medium, flipping orientations, denying gravity. Fusing together disparate materials, Sormin’s work achieves a tension and flow, creating a perpetual momentum beyond our control. 

Born in Thailand, Linda Sormin immigrated to Canada at the age of five. Sormin lives and works in New York City, and is Associate Professor of Studio Art at New York University. She has taught ceramics at Emily Carr University, Rhode Island School of Design, Sheridan College and Alfred University. 

Sormin’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2023, Sormin presented an immersive multi-media installation on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston as part of 'Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence' which then toured to the Seattle Art Museum. Sormin's work has recently been shown at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, and Peach Corner Gallery in Copenhagen, Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, and Messums in Wiltshire, UK. Notable collections include the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark, Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, NY, the RBC Collection, TD Bank, Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington DC, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and The Gardiner Museum, Toronto.

Linda Sormin is represented by United Contemporary and Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

 Read review of Ceramics in the Expanded Field in Art in America.