In his newest body of embroideries, Jordan Nassar raises questions of what lies ahead, suggesting that the mountain is an obstacle that must be overcome. The artist depicts mountainscapes, all...
In his newest body of embroideries, Jordan Nassar raises questions of what lies ahead, suggesting that the mountain is an obstacle that must be overcome. The artist depicts mountainscapes, all within the framework of tatreez, traditional Palestinian embroidery. By rendering landscapes within patterns, he creates layers of perspective that recede or bring forward imagined vistas. In these embroideries, he pieces together panels of dense pattern as if they were tiles in a mosaic. He fits them together to create compositions that vibrate with color. The resulting, checkerboard-like works were created with the participation of Palestinian craftswomen living and working in Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron. In “No Stars in the Night”, 2023, an embroidered mountainscape in a star-like motif symbolizing a ‘feather and moon’ or also known as a ‘cows eye’, emerges from the bottom edge of the canvas, lit by a yellow crescent moon. The sky is rendered in stripes of yellows, greens and pale blues, signaling a shift from day to night.