‘Pardafash’ art show amplifies Sikh identity and trauma 

The fifth-most populous religion in the world has a genderless god and preaches radical compassion. It was founded in 14th-century India as a rebellion against the caste system.

Those are dangerous enough ideas in a world of violently-defended sex and class hierarchies, but Sikhism’s philosophy is not the only thing that gets its disciples singled out. They are the targets of harassment and hate crimes by people prejudiced against Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), and by people who have mistaken their head coverings as markers of Islam in the renewed waves of anti-Muslim violence that flooded the world after 9/11.

And though the vulnerable Sikh diaspora spans the globe, they’re at risk in their own home country of India, where more than 90 percent of their 26 million population lives and is among other religious and ethnic minorities that the state aggressively oppresses.

Speaking out about this is dangerous, according to Boston-based filmmaker and artist Ravjot Mehek Singh, who curated “Pardafash - Art from the Sikh Perspective,” an exhibit of work by 11 artists currently on view at UUU Gallery, 153 State St.

The title of the exhibit, “Pardafash,” is a Punjabi term that means “to reveal the truth.” Together, the artworks present a primer on Sikh culture as well as a lesson in suppressed history through the eyes of people who have experienced trauma directly, or live with the trauma of relatives and friends.

The first thing you’ll notice when you walk into the gallery, though it’s installed on the back wall of the space, is the arresting, larger-than-life painting of a calmly poised Sikh warrior by Amrit Dhari. These days, that spirit takes the form of championing efforts like the 2020-21 farmers’ protests against new damaging agricultural laws, which is explained in an illustration by art duo DesiPun (Uday Vir Singh and Kanwardeep Kaur). There’s also quiet resilience present, in an installation of photographs by Baljit Singh and Kiran Rai of their elders incorporating Punjabi culture into their lives in Canada.



When the exhibition opened in July, the event featured traditional and rock music as well as spoken word performances, including slam poetry about identity by Punjabi-American artist Navpreet Singh. He recited “Thank You, Come Again,” a wrenching piece dedicated to his immigrant father.

“Navpreet also created the installation with the clothesline that was almost like a live diorama of what it would be like to have to flee your home and not have time to clean up or take anything,” Singh said. That piece is titled “No Time to Pack,” and is a domestic scene complete with eyeglasses set on an open book. It’s seemingly serene, save the potted plant knocked over by a quick exit.

When outsiders hear about the 1948 Partition of India — the division of the Punjab state that created Pakistan, and the British empire’s way of salting the earth behind it after India won back its sovereignty — the stories are usually about the turmoil it caused to once neighborly Muslims and Hindus who were suddenly pitted against one another. What is never discussed, Singh said, is the impact on the Sikhs, whose traditional homeland is Punjab. Many Sikhs were forced to flee then, and again in 1984 after Indira Gandhi was killed. She was assassinated in retaliation for ordering the Sikh Golden Temple attack that killed almost 500 civilians, and the world looked away when a series of mob pogroms organized by government officials murdered 3,000 Sikhs and destroyed many more livelihoods.

“If you can imagine the movie, ‘The Purge,’ where the government decriminalizes hatred against a specific type of person for a select number of days, that is basically what happened in real life,” Singh said.

Singh, 28, works full-time as a documentary producer at The Boston Globe, and this is the first art exhibition she has curated.

Included in the show is her artwork, “Zubani Kahani (The Spoken Story),” about piecing together her mother’s recollection of the 1984 Sikh genocide, which Singh says is simply not discussed.

“And if you do talk about it in India, you’ll probably go missing or go to jail,” she said. “Your family will be questioned, maybe tortured.”

She’s not being hyperbolic. A couple of artists backed out in the months leading up to the show, fearful of retaliation. Singh cited the broad-daylight murder of British Columbia-based Sikh temple leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which happened just a few weeks before the exhibition in Rochester launched. The general belief is that Nijjar was killed for his political beliefs, including his call for an independent Sikh nation. Singh said many Sikhs believe it was a hit by the Indian government.

Singh was a child in Connecticut when 9/11 rocked the nation, and she recalls the immediate fallout. Getting called “Osama’s daughter.” People throwing things at her bearded, turban-wearing dad.

“I could go on for days about how it really shattered my self image, how I distanced myself from my own religion,” Singh said. “I used to ask my parents to let me have a Christian name, and be Christian. I didn't even know what I was asking for…I just wanted to be ‘normal.’”

Sikh activists describe a dire situation, and don’t often find outlets for their stories. The Indian government is constantly silencing them, they say — calling them terrorists, putting them in jail, or making them disappear. But this hasn’t deterred Singh or the activist-artists she’s working with to disseminate information about the history and culture of Sikhs, as well as the organized efforts to erase them.

“Because of the energy of all the other artists, I ended up speaking up about it a lot more than I anticipated,” she said. “And I am sure that I'm on India's blacklist today. But what does it mean, to be labeled a terrorist by your home country, and then to feel betrayed by America when we’re called the exact same word here?”

“Pardafash” continues through Sept. 17 at UUU Gallery, uuuartcollective.com.


Rebecca Rafferty is an arts writer at CITY and the co-producer and host of art/WORK, an arts conversation video series created in collaboration with WXXI. She can be reached at [email protected].