Weaver India Thompson reflects on ownership and attachment through intricately woven reed sculptures of everyday objects.
India Thompson is showing Looks Like Home at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, and it's one of those exhibitions that hits on something we've all felt. The show runs from May 16 through October 18, 2026, so you've got plenty of time to catch it.
Thompson is a Southern California-based multidisciplinary artist and educator, born in Los Angeles in 1995. While ceramics is her primary medium, this particular body of work moves into contemporary craft. The exhibition brings together a series of reed sculptures—a microwave, a toilet, a refrigerator—each woven to scale from round reed and reimagined as an intimate, personal keepsake. There's something funny about seeing a toilet rendered in woven reed, but the humor sits right alongside a real tenderness.
The whole series comes from Thompson's own experience of living through a succession of rented apartments. In each one, there were fixtures she didn't legally own but had to tend to as her temporary home, and the work asks what it means to inhabit a space that isn't legally yours. It's a question that anyone who's ever rented an apartment can recognize: that strange gap between the place you live and the place you actually own.
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Thompson describes the slow process of basketry as one of "care and memory-keeping," and as a storytelling medium whose importance spans cultures. That's a good way to think about these pieces—they're not just woven versions of household objects, but records of the time and attention she put into them. The show is curated by Ariana Torres and runs through October 18 at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego.
