Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography.
Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide in solo and group exhibitions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fotografiska, and more. Her work is part of the permanent collections of several museums, institutions, and private collections. A mid-career retrospective of her work was on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the American University of Beirut Museum.
Matar received several awards and nominations including: a 2022 Leica Women Foto Project Award, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2021, 2011, 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships, and a 2011 Griffin Museum of Photography Legacy Award. She is currently a finalist for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. In 2008, she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the ICA/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition.
She has published four books: SHE (2021), L’Enfant-Femme (2016), A Girl and Her Room (2012), and Ordinary Lives (2009).
Presented by Leica Women Foto Project
Despite the dire situation in Lebanon, I found hope and inspiration in the young generation of women. I found myself in awe of them — their creativity, strength, beauty, and resilience. I felt a sense of urgency in collaborating with them to tell their story — our collective story.
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