Rania Matar
“Rania Matar is a wanderess. During one of our musings on SHE, Matar’s ongoing photographic series of women inhabiting breathtaking landscapes in the United States and Middle East, the artist shared with me her favorite line from Roman Payne’s adventure novel. Payne’s coined term ‘wanderess’ alludes to a woman in passionate pursuit of experiences, exploring the world by living out her dreams. Fittingly, SHE features women in their early twenties, the point at which many might begin independent lives. For Matar, a wanderess exists fluidly between two cultures, freely belonging to multiple lands. The Lebanese-Palestinian-American artist herself was born and raised in Beirut, relocating to the United States where she is now based. Her personal trajectory from Beirut to Boston has shaped her identity and palpably informs her art. Wielding her medium format film camera, she continues to journey between the two regions, unearthing the beauty and sublime found in these cross-cultural connections.”
— Orin Zahra, Assistant Curator, National Museum of Women in the Arts , Washington, D.C.
Rania Matar, Samira 15, Bourj El Barajneh Refugee Camp, Beirut Lebanon (Invisible Children Series), 2011, archival pigment print on Baryta paper, 38.6 × 44 inches
Rania Matar is a Lebanese-born American/Palestinian photographer whose portraits explore identity, transition, belonging, and shared emotional experience across the United States and the Middle East. Shaped by her cross-cultural experience and perspective as a woman and mother, Matar often photographs women and girls at moments of self-definition, placing them within interiors, landscapes, and social spaces that reflect both personal presence and larger questions of culture and place.
Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Carnegie Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; National Museum of Women in the Arts; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Fotografiska; and Institut du Monde Arabe. Her books include Ordinary Lives, A Girl and Her Room, L’Enfant-Femme, SHE, and Where Do I Go?