With “Future Impact 3: Design Nation”, Singaporean designers made their mark at Milan Design Week, presenting their works to the international design community. Here, as part of GRAZIA Singapore’s May 2025 issue, we highlight three female designers of different practices whose works speak to the diversity and dynamism of Singapore’s design scene. To kick things off, meet Nazurah Rohayat, a sartorial artist who combines technology with tradition for her work Tapestree.
Created by Nazurah Rohayat, Tapestree presents a modern take on Singapore’s ever-changing identity, by merging traditional patterns with the digital innovations of artificial intelligence (AI). Her culturally inclusive prints, developed by running handpicked motifs from age-old sources through generative AI, serve to showcase the future of Singapore’s multicultural heritage as a dynamic force that dares to reinvent itself.
GRAZIA Singapore (GS): What inspired your initial concept for Tapestree?
Nazurah Rohayat (NR): Tapestree was inspired by my observation of Singapore’s multifaceted cultural identity. Growing up in such a diverse environment, I was fascinated by how different cultural elements coexist and influence each other. I wanted to create something that captured this dynamic interplay—not as separate influences but as a new, integrated whole.
GS: How does AI, paired with traditional craftsmanship, help you tell the story of Singaporean culture?
NR: I turned to AI not as a shortcut, but as a mirror of our cultural complexity. In its ability to process seemingly disparate elements and reveal unexpected harmonies, AI became my creative collaborator. When I fed diverse motifs into the system—Peranakan patterns alongside Malay batik, Chinese symbolism with Indian textile traditions—the AI revealed connections I might never have discovered through traditional design methods alone.
The algorithm proposes possibilities, but it’s the human touch of craftsmanship that breathes life and meaning into these digital visions. This tension—between code and hand, between calculation and intuition—creates a powerful metaphor for Singapore itself: a place where ancestral traditions don’t simply coexist with innovation, but actively inform and transform each other.
GS: What challenges did you face when using AI to generate the dynamic prints found in Tapestree?
NR: Perhaps the most fundamental obstacle I faced was the lack of clean, culturally specific training data. Existing AI models had been primarily trained on Western design traditions, with minimal representation of Southeast Asian motifs. This meant I had to build my own database from scratch—photographing textiles from local museums and family collections, digitising historical patterns, and meticulously categorising each element by cultural origin and symbolic meaning. Training my own machine learning model on this custom dataset was incredibly time-intensive. But this necessity became an opportunity—the very process of creating this database became an act of cultural preservation that enriched the final output.
GS: How did you ensure that the patterns generated by AI accurately and authentically represented the cultural ideas you wished to convey with Tapestree?
NR: I carefully selected which motifs could enter the dataset. I excluded motifs with religious symbolism and animal representations because these elements carry different—sometimes conflicting—meanings across Singapore’s diverse cultures. What’s auspicious in one tradition might be inappropriate in another. By handpicking only cultural elements that could harmoniously coexist, I set clear boundaries for the AI’s creative process.
After curating the dataset, I used a prompt weightage system. Different cultural elements received specific values based on their visual significance and cultural importance, ensuring balanced representation. This approach to cultural blending, combined with careful initial selection, allowed the patterns to maintain authentic connections to their origins while creating new visual combinations. The result reflects Singapore’s reality—where distinct traditions inform each other while maintaining their integrity.
GS: How do you responsibly use AI for art? Do you have advice for artists who wish to marry technology with traditional forms of art?
NR: Responsible AI use in art requires transparency, cultural sensitivity, and human oversight. I believe in clearly communicating when and how AI is used, acknowledging the sources that train the AI, and ensuring that technology serves the artistic vision rather than determining it.
My advice for other artists would be to approach AI as a collaborator rather than a tool. Understand both its possibilities and limitations. Maintain your critical perspective throughout the process. Most importantly, start with a clear understanding of why you’re incorporating technology—what does it enable that traditional methods alone cannot achieve?
This story first appeared in the May 2025 issue of GRAZIA Singapore.
READ MORE
Style In Situ: Inside Tod’s Celebration of Craft and Culture at Milan Design Week
Meet Didi Gan, the Scientist Turning Food Waste Into Edible Innovation
Not All Is Equal In The Kitchen: Three Female Chefs Share Their Stories