Jordan Nassar

Jordan Nassar (b. 1985, New York City) is a visual artist who works primarily with textiles, specializing in works inspired by traditional Palestinian embroidery. With his hand-embroidered textile pieces, he addresses the intersection of craft, language, history, (geo)politics, and technology.

Using geometric patterning adapted from Islamic symbols present in traditional Palestinian hand embroidery which he creates via computer and then meticulously hand stitches, Nassar examines conflicting issues of identity and cultural participation. Nassar does not simply import or recontextualize Palestinian traditions; he brings them in contact with his own Western artistic background.

Beginning with the intricacies of identity and cultural participation, as a Palestinian-American, Nassar treats traditional craft more as medium than a topic, examining subjects such as cultural heritage, ownership, exchange, and absorption; emigrant nostalgia for the “homeland” and its generational repercussions; geography, politics, and orientalism; symbology, codes, and language systems; superstition and religious belief; post-internet visual language; and representational and geometric abstraction. 

His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including; Fantasy and Truth, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA (2022); Jordan Nassar: Lēʻahi, Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design Honolulu, Hawaii (2022) Perpetual Inventory, Volume 1: An Exercise in Looking, The Third Line, Dubai, UAE (2022);The Field Is Infinite, KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY, USA (2020);There is Fiction In The Space Between, The Third Line (2020); Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950-2019, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA (2019) ; The New Minimalists, Abrons Art Center, NYC, USA (2018); Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition, Katonah Museum of Art, NY, USA (2018); Dunya, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2017); And a Night, Evelyn Yard, London, UK (2016); and Ausstellung 61, Exile Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2015).

He lives and works in New York City.