Free Rein

Introduce yourself!
I’m a designer, and I work full-time for a small production studio where I do content creation and other design-related stuff. But on the side, I model under an agency and also do other types of freelance design work.

Wow! How do you juggle so many commitments?
I barely do (laughs). I don’t get a lot of sleep or free time, but I feel very fulfilled when I have all these little activities in my life, so I try to manage as best as I can.

What would you say is your defining characteristic when it comes to your work?
I really enjoy mixing media. It was something that I did a lot even when I was younger—mixing photos and design graphics, 2D and 3D elements, analog and digital. In my designs, if I have free rein, I tend to incorporate this as much as I can because it’[s always more fun to mix things around and come up with something new.

Do you feel like you have switch personas in a sense when you go from being a designer to a model?
I guess more than that, I’d say these different commitments have taught me to find similar skill sets across different jobs. For example, people management skills, social skills, and being creative and on the ball are all things that apply in both designing and modelling.

We hear you also sing as a hobby?
Yeah, I do. I’m part of an Indian school of fine arts, and am actually a classically trained singer. I’ve been doing it for a while now, since I was 12, and now I’m a part of the official orchestra under the National Arts Council. We do a lot of gigs and performances when opportunities arise, so that’s another side gig of mine I guess!

How does singing make you feel, given that you’ve been doing it for so long now?
For me, singing is a thing that I picked up from my parents growing up. My parents, especially my mum, were very interested in music and arts, and so because of our Indian heritage, they tried to expose us to a lot of Indian culture, and so singing has been something that I’ve associated with my background since I was young.

As I started to sing more professionally, it’s just become a part of me, and is another facet of who I am.

That’s such a lovely way of connecting with your roots! What are your opinions on youths and kids these days being disconnected from their culture?
I think I’m a bit of a special case because I’m not a Singaporean, so for the longest time, it was like “Oh, I don’t really belong anywhere”. If you ask me if I belong in India, I’d say no, not really, because I didn’t grow up there. But though I grew up in Singapore, I don’t feel like I necessarily belong because I wasn’t born here. So for me, I’d say I had an easier time staying connected with my Indian roots because it was something that I felt like I had to hold on to as I moved from place to place.

But you know what? If I was any other Singaporean Gen Z, I’d probably be as disconnected to my roots as they are. But in a way, I also think that the kind of culture that local Gen Zs have created in place of that is valuable in itself.