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Jordan Nassar and Sumayya Vally in Conversation
Sumayya Vally: Your embroidery series in No History of Shapes / لا تاريخ للأشكال is incredible in its ability to tessellate and shapeshift, to have multiple configurations by working with the principles of Islamic geometric forms. It’s inspired by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s works. Her memoirs about Chehel Sotoun and Golestan Palaces recount her initial encounter with mirror mosaics, which were so instrumental for her practice. We now know that those same sites have been severely damaged and erased. Monir’s practice speaks to rupture and continuity, and I think of your work with mosaics and embroidery as having a parallel with that in Palestine.
Jordan Nassar: In 2019, I participated in a show at the Whitney Museum called Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950 – 2019. It examined the different uses of craft materials or techniques in art, with a focus on the works in the museum’s Collection. I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of artists when it comes to engaging with craft: One does so in a nostalgic way, in the sense of—No one does this anymore, so I’m going to engage with it—while others do so because it’s literally in danger, being destroyed intentionally. I’m realizing now that these are fundamentally different approaches.
I think in Monir’s lifetime, maybe her approach was rooted more in culture—Islamic or Iranian—because there wasn’t destruction happening like there is now. But the very buildings that inspired her work are now under threat of literally being blown up and not existing anymore. This is a very different kind of threat from the risk of being forgotten. The same is true of Palestinian embroidery. Its very existence is now under threat—not of fading away, but of being intentionally erased and destroyed.
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Jordan Nassar, The Absolute Eternal, 2026, Hand-embroidered cotton on cotton, 81.28 x 63.50 x 3.81 cm (each).
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Installation View: Jordan Nassar, No History of Shapes / لا تاريخ للأشكال, The Third Line, Dubai, at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, London, 2026. Photo: Deniz Guzel.
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That’s how culture works. This crossing, influence, borrowing, rethinking, and the bringing back, in a sense. In terms of the craft, trying to maintain techniques that are being lost or destroyed—it’s all of it together.
The Convertible series by Monir is extra exciting because of their being convertible—you can rearrange them to be viewed in multiple ways, and so there is an infiniteness to them where one work is many works. That was an idea that had been in the back of my mind for years, and I finally got to do it for this show.
Since I’ve never made these before, I had to figure out how to do them in terms of logistics and production—how to get this idea to happen in embroidery instead of in mosaic. It’s been an exciting time of inventing that for myself. While the pieces are based on Monir’s Convertible series, they function differently because the material is so different. They also still incorporate Palestinian embroidery embroidered both in Palestine and in my studio in New York, in the form of patterns and landscape, respectively. The works also incorporate Etel Adnan, whose work and story are centered on the Lebanese Civil War, which essentially is a different phase of the same conflict unfolding right now in Palestine.SV: This is often how great artworks work. There are these connections that could not have been anticipated that lend so much archaeology of meaning across time.
JN: That’s how culture works. This crossing, influence, borrowing, rethinking, and the bringing back, in a sense. In terms of the craft, trying to maintain techniques that are being lost or destroyed—it’s all of it together.
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Jordan Nassar, Jabalia (Tree), 2026, Smalti tile mosaic on aluminum, 46.5 x 38.1 x 4 cm.
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SV: It’s like unearthing resonances that have always been present and are now with this lens, ever present. Could you talk a little bit about how the two shows speak across geography?
JN: The two shows are really one show: it’s the same body of embroidery works and mosaic works divided between two locations. The London show features the first batch of embroidery works that was finished, while the LA show features the second batch. The mosaic pieces in the shows are related too. For my London show, I made studies of five small detailed elements from the original Jabalia mosaic in northern Gaza. You can move the pieces around to create different wholes. For my LA show, I recreated a larger section of the same Jabalia mosaic. One of the small mosaics in the London show includes a lion, and this lion is included in a larger piece in the LA show that also features a tree with a rabbit and three antelope-like animals. It’s like archiving, rehashing, and zooming in and out of a single historical mosaic.
I’ve been doing these Byzantine-style mosaics that are drawn from real mosaics. While they are close to the original, they are not exact replicas. The colors are a little more vibrant. They could be considered as imagining how the original may have looked at one point. I chose to focus on the Jabalia mosaic for this body of work because it’s being destroyed, although I don’t know how damaged it is.
SV: It’s interesting to be archiving something in real time while it, as we know, is probably very damaged.
JN: A lot of the photos I have are from news reports about the site in Gaza. They have moving images, which I’ve been screenshotting to figure out what is there. It’s like putting together an archive, in a sense. But also reworking it.
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I never really know what I'm going to get from them. I love this because it shows each woman’s creativity and matrilineal influence—they’ve learned styles from their mothers, grandmothers, or other women around them. I just get to control my part, which is the landscape, and what comes through is always a surprise.
SV: Could you talk a bit more about how the works are made or what those collaborations look like?
JN: I design the embroidery in terms of the pattern and stitches. The size and shape of the piece gets decided at this stage. I lay that out in black on white, and then send that to the women in Palestine to work on. For some pieces, I'll give little color swatches of the colors I would like them to include in the piece, although the actual colors that are used are up to whatever thread they have that is close enough. But more importantly, I don't indicate where in the embroidery to use which colors. So whoever ends up embroidering it may choose lots of purple and a little bit of yellow or vice versa, which changes the feeling of the piece. With these pieces in particular, the same panels are being embroidered four, five, six times by them. So there are six different women working on the same pattern and the same color palette, but each will do it differently. I never really know what I'm going to get from them. I love this because it shows each woman’s creativity and matrilineal influence—they’ve learned styles from their mothers, grandmothers, or other women around them. I just get to control my part, which is the landscape, and what comes through is always a surprise.
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Most of the women in Palestine I work with are in Ramallah. It’s a little hard to put your finger on the specific individuals who work on a piece because the group changes without my knowledge. There is a main organizing woman, and as projects are given to her, she decides how many people are needed to get each done. So, when I say “the women,” it feels anonymous, but it’s because I’m not updated on exactly how many people are working on it. We try to include the women in the work information in the way they want. Some don’t want their names to be mentioned, so they might just say Ramallah group or ask to mention the village they’re from.
I created this collaborative process to figure out a way to capture what I consider diaspora versus Palestinian embroidery made in Palestine. Over the years, as I processed the notion of “real Palestinian embroidery,” I came to realize that I'm also a part of real Palestinian embroidery as a member of the diaspora, and that Palestinian embroidery, like anything, is not stagnant. But there’s something to be said for embroidery by Palestinian women living in Palestine. That’s what I mean when I say that my work has always been about the diaspora. The whole idea of making work with them is that they do it the “real way,” and I do it “the wrong way,” which is all hyperindividualistic and American. And then I put them together in one piece to open up a dialogue. I’m not trying to be a Palestinian from Palestine. My work is about embracing and figuring out what it means to be Palestinian not from Palestine.
SV: As a Palestinian in the diaspora, these loved heritages are technologies for us to connect with people, land, culture, and practices. It’s beautiful to see this living and breathing in your work—not rooted in nostalgia, but with a real pragmatism of keeping a culture alive and creativity shaping the future.
Jordan Nassar: No History of Shapes / لا تاريخ للأشكال
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