‘Tatreez Garden’ by Dr. Ameera Kawash: A Generative AI Tool Preserving and Sharing Palestinian Heritage
Palestinian-Iraqi-American artist Dr Ameera Kawash has created the Tatreez Garden, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) image generator that allows people across the globe to generate pieces of Tatreez. Tatreez is a form of intricate traditional Palestinian embroidery passed down between generations of Palestinians for centuries. Each piece of Tatreez represents the Palestinian identity, resistance, connection to their land and cultural memory.
Dr Kawash is no stranger to working with Artificial Intelligence. Every time she does, her projects aim to decolonize the development of AI. This was also apparent in her previous projects, such as Future Archives, where she created an archival and artistic intervention to uncover the impact of generative AI on Palestinian lives and narratives. Furthermore, the data that informs generative AI tools are often inextricably tied to oppressive narratives from the Global North. Hence, by creating her own AI image generator, which is culturally informed, Dr. Kawash is attempting to decolonize what is an intrinsically discriminatory but burgeoning technological field. This is why Tatreez Garden by Dr Ameera Kawash is relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and Reduced Inequalities.
In an interview with Untold Magazine, Dr Kawash shared how today, generating images with ‘Palestine’ as a prompt more often than not results in pictures depicting scenarios of violence and conflict. This normalizes the harrowing plight of Palestinians today and creates biases and harmful stereotypes for people who see them. This is why there is a need for projects such as Tatreez Garden to help the general public build an alternative view of Palestine—one that is peaceful and has rightfully existed for thousands of years. Using AI to do this also ensures that this narrative persists as a hopeful and tangible form of existence for the Palestinian people of the future, which is powerful in itself.
Dr Kawash also goes on to outline how the dehumanization of oppressed peoples with generative AI can legitimize more extreme and military employment of artificial intelligence—the violent images of war and destruction generated by AI “occur without a visible perpetrator, resulting in an occupation without an occupier.” This normalizes the view that places like Palestine and other nations in the SWANA region can only ever exist as violent hellscapes or barren ruins.
Dr Ameera Kawash’s Tatreez Garden serves as a powerful tool to preserve Palestinian cultural heritage through technology. By creating an AI image generator dedicated to producing traditional Tatreez patterns, Kawash not only honours the centuries-old embroidery art but also challenges the biases and negative stereotypes often perpetuated by mainstream AI platforms, which are used more pervasively by the day. Through this project, she redefines how Palestinian identity is depicted, emphasizing peace, resilience and cultural continuity.
Find out more about Tatreez Garden and other initiatives by Dr Ameera Kawash on her website www.ameerakawash.com or Instagram @ameera_kawash.