Drills & Desire imagines an alternative vision of Singapore’s mandatory military service through a queer Southeast Asian perspective. Constructing a reimagined military landscape, the series creates space for tenderness, intimacy and desire within an institution traditionally defined by discipline, conformity and hypermasculinity.

Rather than documenting military life as it was, the project imagines what it could have been. Through carefully staged photographs, familiar military rituals, uniforms and spaces are transformed into moments of quiet connection, vulnerability and care. Centered on images rarely associated with military life, the work depicts young men at rest, bodies in close proximity, and gestures of affection that interrupt expectations of constant endurance and performance.

Rooted in the artist’s lived experience of National Service, Drills & Desire reclaims the experience of National Service, transforming what once felt imposed and lost into a story of identity, desire and resilience. inviting viewers to imagine a military landscape where softness is not an exception, but a possibility.