Toronto-based artist Ranbir Sidhu brings forth No Limits, a monumental exhibition on Level 2 of the AGO. Showcasing two decades of mastery in metalworking, Sidhu blends artistry, identity, and spirituality through striking sculptures that challenge our perception. Light becomes an active element in his works bending, scattering, and reflecting across polished surfaces to create what he calls “a shifting field of perception.” Each piece invites quiet contemplation and rewards viewers who take the time to look deeply and reflect.
Installation view of Ranbir Sidhu: No Limits at the AGO
Among the first works viewers encounter is a small but powerful mask displayed in a glass container. To Sidhu, it is not an object of protection but a meditation on what identity means in an image-obsessed world. Echoing English sculptor Henry Moore’s postwar question, “What remains after war?”, Sidhu pushes the conversation forward: “What remains after technology?”
Ranbir Sidhu, Mask as Monument, 2020, fiberglass, aluminized Nomex, acrylic paint, stainless steel, 24-karat gold
Sidhu’s art builds bridges between histories and horizons. Drawing inspiration from Sikh philosophy, postwar sculpture, monumental design, and visions of a futuristic world, his materials: steel, aluminum, gold, and niobium embody both strength and transformation. “Steel is strong, reflective, and timeless,” Sidhu notes, yet under his hand, it becomes something more: a vessel of memory and a mirror to the sacred. Metals, for him, hold both precision and possibility. Stainless steel captures infinity, gold evokes spiritual radiance, and niobium’s shifting colours seem alive. Through these materials, Sidhu reconciles heritage with modernity—an artist forging connections between the earthly and the cosmic.
Among the exhibition’s highlights is Fortress of Memory, a deeply personal work inspired by the Battle of Saragarhi of 1897, where 21 Sikh soldiers fought bravely to the end. Each of the 21 metal sculptures in this series represents a fallen soldier, modeled after the Dastar Bunga—a Sikh turban style meaning “towering fortress” in Persian and Punjabi. The work is both memorial and monument, a poetic intersection of cultural identity and remembrance.
Ranbir Sidhu, Fortress of Memory, 2025, installation detail, stainless steel, marble
Another centerpiece, Asteroid 3033, merges natural and technological imagery. Composed of aluminum and gold-plated steel, the structure resembles a massive azurite crystal. With internal LED lights, fiber optics, and a soundscape blending Indian classical and electronic music, it feels alive—part machine, part celestial body. Sidhu imagines it as a vessel both descending to ward Earth and ascending into the atmosphere, carrying the planet’s essence into the future.
Ranbir Sidhu, Asteroid 3033, X1, 2025, stainless steel, aluminum, gold foil, fiber optics, LED, crystal (above) and detail (bellow)
Another stunning piece, Odyssey, is an engineering and aesthetic marvel. Weighing 5,000 pounds and resting delicately on four points, it’s built from over a thousand mirror-polished and gold-plated stainless-steel components. Its design draws from Byzantine domes, Islamic minarets, Renaissance cupolas, and Sikh sacred architecture, creating what Sidhu calls a “spiritual cartography.” Seen in person, its reflective surfaces create endlessly shifting interactions of light and space—an experience at once architectural and divine.
Ranbir Sidhu, Odyssey, 2025, stainless steel, 24-karat gold, LED, fiber optics
Together, Sidhu’s works create an atmosphere both monumental and meditative. They reflect not only on one another but on the viewer’s own sense of being within space and time. For Sidhu, “form is only the beginning.” What matters most, he says, “is the resonance it awakens—the silence, the memory, the infinite.”
Visitors have until January 3, 2027, to encounter No Limits, an exhibition that turns sculpted metal into living light, inviting everyone to see how art can turn memory into monument and reflection into revelation.
Text and photo: Nusrat Papia
*Exhibition information: Ranbir Sidhu, No Limits, January 16, 2026 – January 3, 2027, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto. Museum hours: Tue and Thurs 10:30am – 5pm, Wed and Fri 10:30am – 9pm, Sat and Sun 10:30am – 5:30pm.