CLINTON, NY,.- without SHAPE without FORM is on a journey to deepen engagement with art, spirituality and mind wellbeing. An assembly of contemporary artists, cultural practitioners, and thinkers co-founded by former Condé Nast fashion director Deep K Kailey, the organisation offers an alternative perspective to the noise, division, and disconnection that defines much of our world today.

To date, it has welcomed more than 60,000 visitors into spaces of stillness and self-discovery through exhibitions at museums including the V&A in London and the Queens Museum in New York.

Conceptualised by without SHAPE without FORM and Toronto-based artist Nirbhai (nep) Singh Sidhu in collaboration with the Wellin Museum of Art, the interactive performance Total Response will take place on March 7, 2026, 7:30pm at Wellin Hall as part of Hamilton College’s esteemed Performing Arts Series.

Bringing together sound and Simran - a focused practice of the mind rooted in contemporary Sikh philosophy - Total Response upends 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, a resonant sonic structure will emerge, celebrating both individual expression and collective presence. By way of this shared experience, Total Response invites audiences to reawaken the mind’s resilience through pathways of compassion.

Artists include prolific producer 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. United by a shared musical philosophy shaped by Afrocentric, community-driven, improvisational practice, they are part of a lineage that runs from Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane through the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) to today’s LA experimental jazz renaissance.

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, curated by Alexander Jarman, Assistant Curator, Wellin Museum of Art

Deep K Kailey, Artistic Director of without SHAPE without FORM says: “We live in a world where we’re constantly connected, yet many of us feel deeply disconnected from ourselves, from one another, and from a sense of meaning. Total Response creates a space to slow down, to listen, and to be present together. In times like these, we believe that cultivating inner stillness can be a quietly radical act of healing.”

Tracy L. Adler, Johnson-Pote Director of the Wellin Museum, adds: “The Wellin Museum collaborates deeply with living artists on the development of its exhibitions. That often means each project requires a new way of thinking and a different approach. For the forthcoming 2027 exhibition Awakened by the Unstruck, we began to understand how critical the concert would be to the creation of the sculptural sound towers which will act as a centerpoint of the exhibition. With the on-campus support of Hamilton’s Performing Art Series and the Fillius Jazz Archive as well as drawing on the Wellin’s Dietrich Museum Programming Fund, we were able to work together with Nep Sidhu and without SHAPE without FORM to bring this concert to life.”

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; 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.

DEEP K KAILEY

As artistic director of without SHAPE without FORM, she plays both a strategic and creative role in establishing without SHAPE without FORM as a leading contemporary, spiritual art space dedicated to mind well- being, working collaboratively with a network of partners nationally and internationally.

Deep has collaborated with renowned institutions such as Arnolfini, Ikon Gallery, New Art Exchange, Queens Museum and the V&A. Her work is a testament to the power of creativity and its ability to bring people together and inspire change. She is on the British Pavilion Selection Committee for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2027.

NIRBHAI (nep) SINGH SIDHU

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

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, our contemporary artistic programme enables 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 a transformative philosophy that pursues self-mastery
in the service of others, connecting courage, compassion and community with a commitment to education, collaboration and exchange.

We create spaces to explore the power of the mind – through curating exhibitions, producing podcasts, publishing articles, delivering workshops and hosting gatherings for Simran (a practice of stillness and deep listening). We believe these encounters help people find peace, resilience and purpose in an increasingly noisy and fractured world.

Social action and openness are central to everything we do. Our approach is boundaryless, experiential and participatory – inviting global voices to a cross-cultural dialogue about purposeful living.

WELLIN MUSEUM OF ART AT HAMILTON COLLEGE

A teaching museum on the campus of Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, the Wellin invites visitors to discover the arts and form unexpected connections through groundbreaking exhibitions, a globally representative collection, and engaging high-touch programming. Artists whose work has been featured in solo exhibitions include Jeffrey Gibson, Yun-Fei Ji, Sarah Oppenheimer, Michael Rakowitz, Elias Sime, and Renée Stout. Through its exhibitions, public programs, and educational outreach, the Wellin Museum sparks dialogues across disciplines, inspires experimentation, and fosters creative inquiry.

The Wellin Museum opened in 2012 with Tracy L. Adler as its founding director. The innovative facility was designed by Machado Silvetti Associates and features a 27-foot- high visible archive, a large exhibition gallery, and other amenities that foster common exchange and learning. Positioned as part of a newly developed arts quad that includes the sprawling Kennedy Center for Theatre and Studio Arts, which opened in 2014, and the Molly Root House, a restored McKim, Mead & White building housing the art history department, the Wellin provides a gateway to the arts and acts as an incubator for interdisciplinary learning for Hamilton students and faculty, and a resource for the community. These facilities marked a major leap forward for Hamilton and ushered in a new era with a dedication to the arts at its core. https://www.hamilton.edu/wellin