- CollegeCentral Saint Martins
- CourseBA (Hons) Graphic Communication Design
- Graduation year2025
"Oh, you're Indian... don't they worship cows there?"
Stereotypical questions like this used to make me shy away from my heritage. Why embrace something that only seemed to invite reductive assumptions? But I got curious. What if these uncomfortable moments could open up space for conversations that help us navigate these experiences differently?
As someone who's always existed in a cultural in-between space, as many of us do in this day and age. I never really knew how to answer the question "where are you from?" Being of Indian heritage, a Canadian citizen but supposedly having lived in a dozen countries makes me internationally nomadic *question mark*, I always clung onto my passport as physical evidence of belonging — this project explores how traditional craft can help navigate that complicated identity.
This project challenges the idea that diaspora communities have "lost" their culture. Maybe we're not missing something, maybe we're creating something different that's just as valuable. The methodology I developed could help other people navigate similar identity questions through hands-on creative practice rather than just thinking about it.
Final work
Printing as Negotiation
I traveled to Jaipur to learn Sanganeri woodblock printing from Awdhesh Pandey, a fourth-generation craftsman. The plan was simple: create a hand-printed sari while figuring out what cultural connection actually means for someone like me. But learning to print became a way of negotiating between different ways of knowing. It made me question what it means to be a designer — how we are often taught to design for the aesthetic of others, but the power we hold as designers when we create for our own communities who share these experiences living our lives in parallel as we grow through the stages of confusion, belonging, and cultural in-betweenness.
Research and process
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