Hajar Ali shares fantastical visions that combine her passion for art, philosophy and travel through her Instagram account, Reverse Orientalism
Many of us may have embarked on projects during the pandemic, but few can claim to have successfully turned a new pastime into a viable profession. For Singaporean artist and entrepreneur Hajar Ali, her experiments with artificial intelligence have created a new professional trajectory. The multi-hyphenate was first intrigued by the surge of interest in NFTs (non-fungible tokens) during the early period of the pandemic. At that time, she was trading equities; these digital artworks were a natural progression from Hajar’s stock market investments.
“It started with collectible profile pictures (PFPs): I cycled through the Bored Apes, Doodles, Azuki and CloneX projects before moving on to art and photography NFTs. It was then that I first thought about creating art,” she shares.
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The increasing sophistication of AI-enabled software naturally intrigued Hajar, who graduated from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (now known as the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies) at the Nanyang Technological University. Although not design-trained herself, the well-travelled businesswoman has worked extensively across the real estate and luxury hospitality industries; the 44-year-old talent has a wealth of experience she could tap into to turn her vision into reality. She just needed the right collaborator and tools; in this case, the design capabilities of AI.
Reverse Orientalism started as an Instagram account that collated the highlights of Hajar’s experiments in generative design. An Instagram post depicting an imaginary house in the jungle went viral this February, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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