{"id":4841,"date":"2026-05-16T14:50:40","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T14:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/?page_id=4841"},"modified":"2026-05-16T15:20:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:20:05","slug":"himmat-shinhat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/himmat-shinhat\/","title":{"rendered":"Himmat Shinhat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ab8170bba7ee955cc2f32c9c70f8196a\">PANJ | \u0a2a\u0a70\u0a1c | Excerpt<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-08393754c8483b0e6eca4d5d60fb15ce wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>by Himmat Shinhat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Panj (\u0a2a\u0a70\u0a1c) \u2014 Excerpt from Movement 3\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PDFPGI9pkvc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-06b7fac60a69c615dde1345d526638be wp-block-paragraph\">Panj (\u0a2a\u0a70\u0a1c \u2014 Punjabi for five) is a solo interdisciplinary performance weaving together live storytelling, psychedelic rock fusion music, and video. It traces five pivotal moments in the creator&#8217;s Punjabi Sikh family history: from the trauma of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, through successive migrations from India to Britain and from Britain to Canada, to the emergence of Himmat Singh Shinhat&#8217;s identity as a queer artist in Tiohti\u00e0:ke (Montr\u00e9al). At its heart, Panj is a biographical reckoning between a son and his father \u2014 a relationship fractured by silence after the son came out as queer, and never reconciled before the father&#8217;s sudden death in 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8b0d45dfae2b7db1faab491dccb68aac wp-block-paragraph\">Central to the work is the father&#8217;s photographic archive \u2014 decades of images documenting family life that become, in retrospect, a visual language of love the son had not yet learned to read. The performance enacts a form of biographical translation: recovering meaning across silence, across generations, and across the cultural rupture of Partition and diaspora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1f93b08b5c2a0bc3f447e62b0a8f8e1c wp-block-paragraph\">A key dramaturgical element is the peti \u2014 a traditional Indian wooden chest, handmade by the father as a gift for his son, that recurs throughout the performance as a living metaphor. Family photographs are projected directly onto its open lid, collapsing the distance between personal archive and embodied presence, between the past that is carried and the body that carries it. This staging enacts the central biographical question of the work: what do we inherit, what do we lose, and what do we discover, too late, that we were always holding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86d8b4ea475dc16fe6b66dada966b6db wp-block-paragraph\">Panj premiered at Montr\u00e9al Arts Interculturels (MAI) during Festival Acc\u00e8s-Asie in May 2022. It is the first movement of an ongoing autobiographical practice, continued in Mil\u0101pa (\u0a2e\u0a3f\u0a32\u0a3e\u0a2a \u2014 reunion, coming together), currently in development as both memoir and performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" src=\"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0108-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4844\" srcset=\"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0108-1.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0108-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0108-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0108-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0108-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0109-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4845\" srcset=\"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0109-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0109-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0109-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0109-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_0109.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/tell-me2026-exhibition\/\">&lt;&lt;&lt;Tell.Me Exhibition<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PANJ | \u0a2a\u0a70\u0a1c | Excerpt by Himmat Shinhat Panj (\u0a2a\u0a70\u0a1c \u2014 Punjabi for five) is a solo interdisciplinary performance weaving together live storytelling, psychedelic rock fusion music, and video. It traces five pivotal moments in the creator&#8217;s Punjabi Sikh family history: from the trauma of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, through successive migrations&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"clear\"><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/himmat-shinhat\/\" class=\"gdlr-info-font excerpt-read-more\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4841","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4841"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4864,"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4841\/revisions\/4864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2026.tellme-symp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}