Uncertain Ground
Gardiner Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada
November 6, 2025 — April 12, 2026
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Gardiner Museum video of Linda discussing inspiration and ideas in the current installation, “Uncertain Ground."
Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid
Uncertain Ground current solo museum exhibition | Multimedia installation at the Gardiner in Toronto - through April 12, 2026
Excerpt from “At the newly renovated Gardiner Museum, a ravishing installation explodes with kaleidoscopic effect”, review in Toronto Star by Arts Critic and Reporter, Joshua Chong (Toronto Star, November 15, 2025).
“Indonesia, the land of Linda Rotua Sormin’s ancestors, the Batak people, is an archipelago of tempestuous volcanoes. So, it’s fitting that her new exhibition, “Uncertain Ground”, a ravishing ode to her family that blends memory and myth, features a hulking volcano at its centre.
In this immersive installation. . . that volcanic beast takes on a character of its own. It’s a symbol of chaos, change, flux. It’s also a metaphor, representing the stories of the artist’s Batak ancestors, whose lives were upended by the arrival of Dutch colonists in the early 17th century.”
Excerpt from “Creative Chaos: Linda Rotua Sormin explores cultural dislocations in her immigrant family history with Gardiner Museum installation,” review in Globe and Mail by Art Critic Kate Taylor (The Globe and Mail, November 27, 2026).
“. . . dark, febrile and anarchic, an installation by contemporary ceramist Linda Rotua Sormin. A ramped pathway leads the viewer on to a wooden platform passing between mounded walls of seemingly random ceramic shards and sculptures, a riot of shapes and colours.
This passage culminates in a huge irregular-shaped screen where a hypnotic video features abstract effects playing over top of hands cutting vegetables, unfolding traditional fabrics or discovering shadow puppets, while a soundtrack offers birdsong and snatches of conversations.
. . . One of Sormin’s most intriguing gestures is the creation of glazed vessels fashioned from open grids, like twists of rope netting yet made from fired ceramics, pieces filled with contradictory indications about their materials and their functions.”
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Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, USA
January 16, 2009 — March 16, 2009