Bringing together new embroideries and mosaics inspired by archaeological remains in Gaza, Palestinian artist Jordan Nassar explores cultural heritage and the evolving relationship between diaspora and homeland at No History of Shapes / لا تاريخ للأشكال, presented by Dubai gallery The Third Line, currently on view at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street in Mayfair.
Central to his practice is tatreez, the traditional Palestinian form of cross-stitch embroidery whose geometric motifs have historically conveyed regional identity and belonging. Working within this inherited visual language, Nassar, who is Palestinian-American, creates imagined landscapes that reflect the relationship between Palestine and its diaspora, drawing on a sense of place shaped as much by memory and imagination as by direct experience. For this exhibition, he has developed a series of embroidered panels inspired by the modular constructions of Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, allowing their arrangement to change while the individual landscapes remain intact.
Alongside these works are glass mosaics based on a Byzantine archaeological site in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Reconstructing figures and decorative motifs from photographs and historical references, Nassar has turned his attention to the material remains of Palestinian history and the increasingly precarious circumstances of their preservation. The mosaics mark a more direct political engagement in his practice since October 2023, as he painstakingly recreates fragments of an archaeological heritage threatened by destruction.
The exhibition takes its title from Describing Clouds, a poem by Mahmoud Darwish in which the changing forms of clouds become a meditation on the passing of time and the impossibility of holding on to any one moment. For Nassar, the phrase recalls his first visit to Palestine as a teenager and the transformations he has witnessed since.
Here, the Palestinian artist gives us some insight into his work and what he'll be showcasing at Frieze Week in London.
Your new embroidered works introduce an element of change through panels that can be arranged in different configurations. What interested you in exploring this approach?
The idea came from Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s Convertibles, a series of mirror mosaics that can be rearranged into different configurations. I was fascinated by the possibility of a single work taking on several forms, and it was something I had wanted to explore for years. This exhibition gave me the opportunity to experiment with that idea through embroidery. The flexibility of these works also reflects a recurring concern in my practice: the experience of diaspora and its evolving relationship with the homeland.
Your landscapes have long explored Palestine through the perspective of diaspora. How does their meaning change when they occupy different positions within a larger composition?
The landscapes themselves remain intact, with each one embroidered onto an individual panel. What changes is their position within the larger composition. A landscape placed at the centre of a work feels very different from one positioned at its edge, and that distinction interests me. The possibility of rearranging the panels to accommodate different spaces also reflects the way people in the diaspora relate to their homeland. Its place in our minds and hearts can change over time, depending on our circumstances and experiences.
The exhibition’s title, No History of Shapes, comes from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem Describing Clouds. How does it relate to your own experience of Palestine?
I was initially drawn to the phrase itself. I had been reading Palestinian poetry, looking for something that reflected the process behind these works, particularly the idea of taking forms apart and rearranging them. In Describing Clouds, Darwish writes about the impossibility of describing a cloud because its shape has already changed by the time we attempt to define it. The phrase “no history of shapes” interested me for precisely that reason: the idea that forms are constantly changing, one becoming another before it can be recorded.
Gradually, I began to think about this in relation to the continual changes I have witnessed in Palestine. I first visited as a teenager, when my father took us there shortly before the Second Intifada. He wanted us to experience Palestine for ourselves, knowing how uncertain its future was. The Palestine I encountered then is very different from the one that exists today, and those changes continue, from the landscape and the laws governing daily life to checkpoints that appear and disappear overnight.
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