Linda Chau

My work begins with the way memory interrupts us.

I am interested in how memory does not stay where we put it. It returns out of order, repeats itself, and rewrites what we thought we understood. Some moments do not end cleanly. They linger, resurface, and quietly shape who we are. I am drawn to that suspended feeling: when something is unfinished, unresolved, or caught between presence and disappearance.

I work through installation to make memory physical—something that can be moved around, carried, and entered. Rather than telling a clear story, I construct spaces that hold hesitation and quiet intensity, where meaning forms slowly through repetition and encounter.

My recent work, Softlock, takes its title from gaming terminology. A softlock is when a game is still running, but progress becomes impossible. You are trapped in a loop. That idea felt painfully familiar to me. It speaks to the way certain memories behave: active, persistent, and impossible to fully resolve.

Using clay, stone, and repeated forms, I build a system of fragments—traces of touch, weight, and time. The materials act like evidence. They hold pressure, absence, and residue, as if something has happened and is still happening.

Softlock is not about nostalgia. It is about becoming. It reflects my own process of self-understanding, shaped by heritage, loss, and repetition. I hope the work feels like stepping into a paused moment: quiet, tense, and strangely alive, where viewers can recognise their own relationship to what they carry, what they forget, and what returns.