Jordan Nassar is an embroidery artist of Palestinian descent who lives and works in New York City. He embroiders his composition of repeated patterns using traditional Palestinian motifs and his own set of symbols. His favorite subject is landscape as a sort of utopian vision of Palestine. On an interview with Berlin Art Link he says this about his patterns:
“One of the features of Palestinian embroidery is that each town, village, and region has symbols that are distinctly theirs, that can identify them to others when an onlooker sees one such symbol on their clothing.”
“When I began working with this embroidery, it didn’t feel right to me to use symbols that would identify me as being from Bethlehem, or from Ramallah, or from Jerusalem, as I’m from New York, and so I did develop my own lexicon. However, as the years have gone by, and as I’ve spent so much more time in Israel and Palestine, and as my work has developed from an idea to more of a way of life, I’ve let go of this concern and now freely use symbols from all over.”
The artist can be followed on his website and on Instagram.
Images: Courtesy of Jordan Nassar.
