Embroidered visions of a peaceful Palestine – in pictures

Jordan Nassar was born and raised in New York by his Palestinian-American father and Polish-American mother. “The fight for Palestinian equality is very important in my family,” he says. “My father, a psychiatrist, spent his life helping people there.” Nassar was a crafty child, into origami and kirigami, and then he progressed to embroidery. “It’s the most recognisable element of Palestinian culture, something I had grown up around in our house and almost all of the other Arab homes I’ve been to.”

To create the works, he collaborates with embroiderers in Palestine. “I love that my artistic process brings business to Palestine,” he says, but his beautiful vistas are very much diasporic. “The land in my works manifest the imaginations of Palestinians outside Palestine… In our dreams, there is no occupation, no anguish – our Palestine is beautiful and serene.”