Raahil Dogra built his winning artwork inside a box, then filled it with everything that sits outside one. A 16-year-old from India, he is the Art Category Winner of the ChallengeUS Future Leaders Competition, and his three-dimensional piece of Lego sculptures, painted book pages, a mirror, and more says as much about his own life as it does about the world young people are growing up in.

Raahil was born and raised in Gurugram, India, and spent his whole life there. For 12 years he attended the same school, until two years ago, in ninth grade, when he joined a hostel in Jaipur and moved to an international curriculum. He has always loved art and design, along with math and physics, and he sees the combination as a strength. “I always put all my work into that,” he says.

He is also, by his own account, a deeply social person. “I’ve never wanted to be an introvert,” he explains. Life in a hostel has put him alongside people from around the world, including a roommate who was born in Africa, spent time in the United States, and lived in Singapore before arriving in India. “Now I enjoy speaking to people from all over the world, learning about them, how their life is, and always being there to support them,” he says. One way he embodies this within his own life is serving as the head boy of the hostel. He sees this leadership as service: he likes being at the front, he says, but only to be there for “the people that I am actually there for.”

Outside the studio and classroom, he plays football, volleyball, and swimming. Looking ahead, he hopes to join his mother and grandfather in their family business while also starting his own design firm. Two mottos guide that ambition. The first is that he is “inspired by the fear of being average,” a phrase shaped by a conversation with his father. “Average isn’t bad,” his father told him, but “you should never think that you played something safe.” The second came from a senior teacher at his old school before he left: “if the universe puts a dream in your heart, it has every intention for you to make it happen.” For Raahil, that dream has always been art.

Art has been part of his life for as long as he can remember. He grew up in a home where art was a shared hobby, and strongly valued. But, it was a story about his grandmother that gave his passion its direction: she was accepted to the Delhi Arts University but was not allowed to attend. “That was actually a very killer point for me,” he says. No one in his family has attempted to professionally pursue design since, and Raahil is determined to change that. “I wanted to be the first one to step up the game,” he says, an ambition that echoes his father’s advice never to play it safe.

His greatest accomplishment, he says, is becoming someone who can talk to anyone, children and adults alike, “without any borders or boundaries.” His second is that he never backs out of a challenge, no matter how difficult it appears.

Those experiences run through his winning art piece. The art piece originated from the Lego sets his father brought home from vacations, which he and his brother first built from handbooks and eventually without them. “That was the foundation of where I am here,” he says, linking Legos to “creativity, working hard, using instructions, and building something.” He sculpted his own face from Lego and placed a mirror on top of the piece, surrounded by Lego figures: a football player, an engineer, a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, an artist. The idea is that viewers see themselves in the mirror and connect with whichever figure fits them best. 

The backdrop of painted book pages carries its own meaning. Books, he says, are where stories and inspiration begin, and everyone finds a character who resonates with them. For him, it was Tintin. Other elements come from harder moments. One early piece depicts him held down by papers labeled exams, workload, pressure, and money, from the year he moved to the hostel and watched classmates cry from homesickness.

The tag reading “wait your turn” grew out of his own experience. Many people support you, he says, but there will always be moments when someone stops you or favors someone else. “Never stop and believe in at least your own self,” he says. 

What troubles him is how little room young people have to answer back. Adults and seniors, he says, often put students down, and he saw it during the recent protests, when some older people posted harsh comments online about the young people taking part. Young people are expected to listen and think before they speak, he explains, because adults “have more experience than us, even if they’re right or even if they’re wrong.” But he believes his generation refuses to stay silent, and the chains within his piece reflect that view.

That is why he believes young voices matter. “The whole ethos of the whole Gen Z community is that we want to have our own voice,” he says, “and we want to give a voice for each other.” He points to student protests across India supporting girls and women, which he says drew young people from schools and colleges before eventually earning support from members of parliament. He admires the protesters’ persistence, even as some adults criticized them online, and the humor they brought, including adults who dressed in gorilla costumes and joined the students. “Young people are now standing out everywhere,” he says. He also sees technology as part of the story, which is why the figure in his piece holds an iPad. 

His advice is simple. “Don’t be afraid to speak up,” he says, and “never shy away from who you truly are.” For Raahil Dogra, art is a way for young people to express themselves whilst simultaneously providing an avenue for connection. He hopes to continue using art as a medium to speak up about the issues he is passionate about, and hopes that other youth do so as well.

See his category-winning submission here.