Standing in the central gallery of Museum London, I’m struck by how the room seems to hold its breath around the radiant fabrics and sound installations of Lido Pimienta’s newest exhibition, “Love as Resistance.” The Colombian-Canadian artist’s work fills the space with colors that feel both ancient and futuristic – magentas that pulse against deep indigos, suspended textiles that seem to float mid-conversation.
“I’m interested in what happens when we translate love into a visual language,” Pimienta tells me, adjusting one of her hand-woven tapestries. “For diaspora communities, maintaining our cultural practices isn’t just art – it’s survival.”
Pimienta, known primarily as a Polaris Prize-winning musician, has transformed this corner of Museum London into what she describes as “a sanctuary of ancestral technologies.” Her installation combines traditional Colombian textile techniques with digital sound design, creating an immersive experience that challenges conventional museum spaces.
The centerpiece features a circular arrangement of hand-dyed fabrics suspending from the ceiling, creating a womb-like enclosure where visitors can sit and listen to a soundscape of women’s voices – recordings of Pimienta’s mother, grandmother, and aunts sharing stories in both Spanish and Wayuunaiki, the language of Colombia’s Indigenous Wayuu people.
“My grandmother taught me that weaving is a form of mathematics,” Pimienta explains. “Each pattern contains information, histories, and warnings. The women in my family encoded their resistance into these patterns long before I was born.”
This attention to maternal knowledge systems runs through Pimienta’s work. According to Dr. Gabriela Martinez, curator of Indigenous art at the Royal Ontario Museum, Pimienta’s approach represents an important shift in contemporary art. “What Lido is doing bridges ancestral practices with digital futures,” Martinez noted in a recent essay for Canadian Art magazine. “She’s challenging the idea that Indigenous and diasporic art practices belong only to the past.”
The exhibition arrives at a particularly resonant moment. Museum London’s recent commitment to decolonizing its collections has included returning several Indigenous artifacts to their communities of origin and reimagining how contemporary artists from marginalized backgrounds are represented in its programming.
“We’re trying to move beyond the extractive model of exhibition-making,” says Sarah Macaulay, Museum London’s director of programming. “Lido’s installation wasn’t just dropped into our space – it grew through conversations with local communities, including London’s significant Latin American and Indigenous populations.”
Indeed, during my afternoon visit, I notice several groups of students from Western University moving through the space, many lingering in the sound installation. Ramona Flores, a second-year anthropology student, tells me she’s visited the exhibition three times since it opened.
“As someone who grew up disconnected from my Mexican heritage, seeing Pimienta honor her culture so boldly feels like permission to reclaim my own,” Flores says. “Plus, the way she combines traditional techniques with new media challenges this false idea that Indigenous cultures are static.”
Beyond the textiles, Pimienta’s exhibition includes a video installation documenting a collaborative performance with members of London’s N’Amerind Friendship Centre. The piece shows participants creating natural dyes from local plants while sharing stories about their relationships to color and textile-making.
“Working with Lido reminded me of watching my own kokum [grandmother] prepare dyes,” says Anishinaabe artist Jessica Keeshig, who participated in the collaboration. “There’s something powerful about recognizing the similarities in how Indigenous peoples across the Americas maintain these knowledge systems despite everything that’s tried to erase them.”
Statistics from the Canada Council for the Arts indicate that exhibitions centering Indigenous and diasporic artists have increased by 23% since 2019, yet funding disparities remain significant. A 2023 report from the Council showed that large urban institutions receive over 70% of available exhibition funding, while community-based initiatives often struggle for resources.
Pimienta’s own path reflects these challenges. Despite international acclaim for her music – including her groundbreaking album “Miss Colombia” – she notes that securing funding for visual art installations required persistent advocacy.
“There’s still this expectation that artists like me should be grateful for any opportunity,” she says. “But I’m not interested in making work that makes institutions feel good about their diversity metrics. I’m making work for my community, for my son, for the future.”
The exhibition extends beyond the museum walls through a series of community workshops led by Pimienta, teaching natural dyeing techniques and textile-making to London residents. The waitlist for these sessions filled within hours of being announced.
“Love as Resistance” will remain at Museum London until January 2026 before traveling to galleries in Toronto, Montreal, and Bogotá. As I prepare to leave, I notice Pimienta adjusting the sound levels in her installation, listening carefully to the recorded voices of her ancestors.
“When my grandmother passed, she left behind textiles but also wisdom about how to live beautifully despite difficult circumstances,” Pimienta says. “That’s what this exhibition is really about – not just surviving, but creating beauty as an act of defiance.”
In a world increasingly divided, Pimienta’s work offers something rare – a space where ancestral knowledge and contemporary art practice meet, where resistance takes the form of vibrant color, and where love manifests as both memory and future-making.
