Nassar bases his work on
tatreez (Palestinian
cross-stitch embroidery) which is typically created in panels which are stitched together into clothing or other items. Nassar typically creates and frames small panels, many around 8 x 10 inches. The panels' patterns typically feature geometric borders and depict plants and flowers, though the thread colors Nassar uses often do not correspond to those shapes, but to subtle landscapes. Beyond embroidery, Nassar works with glass mosaics, brass and mother-of-pearl wood inlay, and hand-fired glass beads. His mosaic practice began during a 2022 residency at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu, resulting in
Lē‘ahi (2022), now in the museum's collection. In 2024, his Los Angeles exhibition
Surge presented mosaics such as
Mudun Falastin (Palestinian Cities), which incorporated the Arabic names of 22 historic Palestinian cities. Landscape is a recurring theme in his work, functioning as a metaphor for homeland, memory, and diaspora. Nassar's earliest work involved copying embroidery patterns from books. Once he learned that each Palestinian village has its own pattern, he began to develop his own patterns resembling Palestinian embroidery but that do not exist in traditional works. Nassar draws inspiration from a number of artists, many of whom work in textile, such as
Sheila Hicks,
Hannah Ryggen, and
Anni Albers; painters including
Paul Guiragossian and
Helen Frankenthaler; and artists working with alternative media, such as
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. He sees his work as continuing the conversations their artwork has created. He considers their efforts to be about form, texture, and color, though Nassar primarily tries to address concepts and issues beyond the medium itself. Nassar particularly looks up to
Etel Adnan, a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist. In addition to Nassar's embroidery, he also has had managerial positions at the New York City artists book shop
Printed Matter, Inc., running the
NY Art Book Fair and the art fair Art Los Angeles Contemporary.
Artist residency Nassar started expanding the use of traditional symbols in his work upon spending significant time in the port city of
Jaffa, where he stayed for a five-week
artist residency in 2017. Arab and Israeli friends, as well as Nassar's husband had advised against the residency, due to the organization's acceptance of financing from supporters of illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine. Nassar decided that boycotting the program would not be impactful, and was impressed that the residency's website was inclusive through its Arabic, Hebrew, and English language versions. The residency included an apartment, studio, stipend, and reimbursement of production funds. Nassar used the funds to visit the West Bank, where he purchased embroideries made by elderly craftswomen. ==Personal life==