Art

I am a composer and multidisciplinary artist whose work spans live performance, visual storytelling, and community building. My musical compositions explore the resonances between my training in western classical music, the Sikh religious music and Bollywood soundtracks of my childhood home, Indian classical and folk traditions, and the British Art Rock movement of the 1970s that was the soundtrack for my adolescence and helped shape my aesthetic.

As a professional musician, I've created soundtracks for theatre, film, contemporary dance, and performance art. My performance experience spans decades as a band leader, solo artist, and collaborator with rock bands, theatre groups, and artist collectives. I have presented work across Canada, both independently and at various festival spaces.

My visual practice centres on family archives - particularly my late father's extensive photography collection from the 1950s to the early 2000s. I create video narratives and composites from these images, weaving together personal and historical memory. This archival work began with Panj (ਪੰਜ), where I discovered the healing potential of seeing my life through my father's lens. Currently, I'm expanding this practice through meditative nature photography during my walks, learning how the act of image-making itself can be transformative.

My writing encompasses autobiographical storytelling, socio-cultural commentary and analysis, and poetry, some of it published in Montreal Serai magazine. In collaboration with my mother, Surjit Kaur Shinhat, I've also published multilingual children's books presenting stories from Sikh history in English, French, and Punjabi - extending my practice of making cultural memory accessible across generations and languages.

Beyond creating, I've spent decades helping to build arts infrastructure in Montreal as co-founder and past president of Montreal Serai, co-founder and board member of Festival Accès-Asie, and past president of Montreal Arts Interculturels and the Centre Culturel et Communautaire Henri Lemieux in LaSalle. This community work is integral to my practice - creating spaces where diverse voices can be heard and where art serves as a bridge between cultures.

My artistic journey has naturally evolved to include healing work, where the same skills of presence, listening, and holding space that performance taught me now serve others seeking transformation through plant medicine.