Overview

September 11, 2027 – June 11, 2028

Curated by Alexander Jarman, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions and Academic Outreach

Awakened by the Unstruck brings together artist Nirbhai (nep) Singh Sidhu and the UK-based arts organization without SHAPE without FORM (wSwF) in a new collaboration with the Wellin Museum, exploring both spiritual and material states of being through sculpture, drawing, architecture, sound, and Simran—a focused practice for the mind rooted in contemporary Sikh philosophy. Simran is a specific technique that quietens the mind by eliminating thoughts through the repetition of a neutral two-syllable word, with attention placed on one’s own voice.

The exhibition encourages visitors to experience how sound can function as an internal instrument for connection, heard not only through the ear but by the mind itself. At the show’s center is an omnidirectional sound sculpture by Sidhu that draws on recordings from the forthcoming Spring 2026 concert titled Total Response, a performance that brings together music, sound, and Simran in acts of collective interplay and presence recorded live at Hamilton’s Wellin Hall. Drawing upon Sikh knowledge production, Awakened by the Unstruck offers an opportunity for open exchange between Sidhu’s artwork, Simran practitioners, and visitors that engenders a deeper awareness of the self. Through sound, image, and guided programming, the exhibition expands the creative potential of Simran as a shared expression of fearlessness and compassion. It offers a space for self-discovery and restoration—a call to reclaim the mind, live with integrity, and act from a consciousness that recognizes its own boundless nature. 

Exhibition Related Events: 

Saturday, March 7, 2026
7:30 P.M. | Total Response: Sound and Simran
Wellin Hall, Schambach Center, Hamilton College

Total Response brings together sound and Simran—a focused practice of the mind rooted in contemporary Sikh philosophy—to upend traditional notions of performer and audience. Embracing Harmolodics—the free interplay of harmony, melody, and rhythm—a collective of six multi-instrumentalists and a Simran practitioner will foster the co-creation of music and sound with concert attendees. Together, we will build a resonant sonic structure that celebrates both individual expression and collective presence. By way of this shared experience, Total Response invites us to reawaken the mind’s resilience through pathways of compassion. Artists include Carlos Niño (also the concert’s music director), Surya Botofasina, Austin Williamson, and Michael Alvidrez, with Special Guests Ishmael Butler and Angel Bat Dawid, and “Koi” guiding and voicing Simran.

A recording of the concert will become the heartbeat of a sound installation in the forthcoming Wellin Museum exhibition Nirbhai (nep) Singh Sidhu and without SHAPE without FORM: Awakened by the Unstruck, opening Fall 2027.

Funding for this program has been provided by the Daniel W. Dietrich ’64 Arts Museum Programming Fund, Wellin Museum of Art; the Performing Arts Series at Wellin Hall Schambach Center; the Pellman Fund for the Arts; and the Fillius Jazz Archive.

Total Response is co-organized by the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Nep Sidhu, without SHAPE without FORM, and the Performing Arts Series at Hamilton College.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. Tickets are available in advance or at the door. Reserve Tickets.

About the Collaborators

Nirbhai (nep) Singh Sidhu is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist who works through labor-based knowledge production, Sikh interiority, and blood memory as an adaptive method for resilience and remembrance. For this exhibition, Sidhu will create a new body of drawings, sculptures, multimedia works, and paintings that reflects a Simran focused visual output to address realities of languaging and musicking as natural modes of ‘embodying a text’ (Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji) or ‘becoming the sound’ (Unstruck Melody) in the pursuit of expanding the mind while losing one’s autobiographical self.

Sidhu’s practice draws from a personal lifetime and family lineage of working in metal manufacturing plants in Toronto and the building of community-based sites for youth development such as Sher-E-Punjab Sports Academy in Chakar, Punjab. Through sound and silence, precedent works by the artist reveal an expansion of both the social external and cellular internal including omni-directional sound systems such as A Disappearance Potential (2021) and the interactive counter surveillance drum machine engaged by the public as a dual pinball arcade entitled The PIGG500 Security and Leisure Enhancement Console (2017). His varying material approaches to artmaking put forth a nondual guiding principle of detachment, leading to hyper presence, as seen in They Awakened in Algorithm (2021), an embroidered painting which bring together text, glyphs, architecture, and patterning. The ambition of his work is “to center realities of oneness that we don’t encounter physically, by pointing to the ecstatic and sensual in revealing a greater presence, with entities, ideas and one another.” Sidhu’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Aichi Triennale, Nagoya City Museum, Japan; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Esker Foundation, Calgary; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. He is a member of the Black Constellation collective and designs clothing and adornment under the Paradise Sportif moniker.

without SHAPE without FORM is an assembly of artists, thinkers, and cultural practitioners committed to making moments of self-discovery accessible for everyone. Rooted in Sikh philosophical concepts, their contemporary artistic program and partnerships enable people to have meaningful conversations about the mind. Guided by insights and tools from over 500 years of Sikh knowledge, without SHAPE without FORM explores transformative teachings that pursues self-mastery in the service of others, connecting courage, compassion, and community with a commitment to education, collaboration, and exchange.