Jordan Nassar

Jordan Nassar (born 1985) is an American contemporary visual artist. He primarily works with textiles, especially in creating works based on traditional Palestinian embroidery. Nassar also creates self-published artist's books and zines. He is based in New York City.

Nassar's practice also encompasses glass mosaics, wood inlay, and installations. His work often addresses themes of landscape, heritage, and diaspora, and he is represented by Anat Ebgi Gallery and James Cohan Gallery .

Early life Nassar was born in 1985 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he also grew up.

Beyond embroidery, Nassar works with glass mosaics, brass and mother-of-pearl wood inlay, and hand-fired glass beads. His mosaic practice began during a 2022 residency at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu, resulting in Lē‘ahi (2022), now in the museum's collection.

In 2024, his Los Angeles exhibition Surge presented mosaics such as Mudun Falastin (Palestinian Cities), which incorporated the Arabic names of 22 historic Palestinian cities.

Landscape is a recurring theme in his work, functioning as a metaphor for homeland, memory, and diaspora.

Nassar's earliest work involved copying embroidery patterns from books. Once he learned that each Palestinian village has its own pattern, he began to develop his own patterns resembling Palestinian embroidery but that do not exist in traditional works.

Nassar draws inspiration from a number of artists, many of whom work in textile, such as Sheila Hicks, Hannah Ryggen, and Anni Albers; painters including Paul Guiragossian and Helen Frankenthaler; and artists working with alternative media, such as Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. He sees his work as continuing the conversations their artwork has created. He considers their efforts to be about form, texture, and color, though Nassar primarily tries to address concepts and issues beyond the medium itself. Nassar particularly looks up to Etel Adnan, a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist.

In addition to Nassar's embroidery, he also has had managerial positions at the New York City artists book shop Printed Matter, Inc., running the NY Art Book Fair and the art fair Art Los Angeles Contemporary. "The Field Is Infinite”, KMAC Museum, Louisville (2021) 2017 – Artport Tel Aviv, Israel

Awards In 2022, Nassar received the United States Artists Fellowship in Craft.

Publications Nassar has self-published a number of artist's books and zines, including: A Whole New World (2016) We Were Here First (2016) Bellevue (2016) Any Other Rose (2016) Messenger of the Gods (2016) Kahlil Gibran (2016) When It's Naked (2015) Ma Rose Apocalypse (2015)