The imagined Palestinian landscapes of Jordan Nassar's tatreez panels
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once dedicated a poem to the frustration he felt at his inability to describe a cloud. Staring up at the sky while walking alone on an unnamed mountain, he wrote that the clouds were “like a cottoned ginned by wind, like a white idea about the meaning of existence”. That poem – and presumably Darwish’ failing words – guides a new series of contemporary…
The New York artist Jordan Nassar's latest series of contemporary artworks, showcased at the Dubai gallery The Third Line, explores the imagined landscapes of Palestine through the lens of the diaspora. The Third Line's presentation marks Nassar's first UK exhibition in a decade.
In the piece "They Build Homes with Clouds" (2026), Nassar stitches green, red and purple-hued mountains against an ochre sky, accompanied by the sea, onto canvas. The panel is flanked by four smaller ones depicting colorful embroidered squares. Nassar describes these landscapes as "versions of Palestine as they exist in the minds of the diaspora," combining the traditional Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery, tatreez, with abstract patterning.
These dreamlike, colorful and fantastical scenes could easily belong to an American road movie traversing the Mojave or Sonoran deserts. Nassar's work is rooted in his own experience growing up in New York, where his father is of Palestinian heritage and his mother is Polish. His paternal grandfather, who migrated to the US in the 1910s, played a pivotal role in establishing the Arab American community in Yonkers.
Nassar's work delves into questions of belonging and the diaspora experience, touching upon the challenges faced by Palestinians due to Israel's occupation. He designs the panels, then commissions the embroideries from craftswomen living in the West Bank. The process involves shipping the fabric to Ramallah, picking up the finished pieces in Gaza, and mailing them to the US.
A second part of the exhibition examines archaeology and the politics of cultural heritage in conflict, featuring hand-cut glass mosaics inspired by Byzantine church mosaics in Gaza. These mosaics depict an orange tree, a lion, a man, and patterns from the original church, highlighting the destruction of cultural sites by Israeli forces.
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