Rania Matar

Rania Matar (born 1964) is a Lebanese/Palestinian/American documentary, portrait and fine art photographer. She photographs the daily lives of girls and women in the Middle East and in the United States, including Syrian refugees.[1]

Rania Matar
Born1964
Lebanon
NationalityAmerican / Lebanese
Alma materAmerican University of Beirut,
Cornell University
Known forFine art photography
Websitewww.raniamatar.com
Becoming at RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco
She Who Tells a Story exhibited at National Museum of Women in the Arts

Early life

Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984.[2] Originally trained as an architect at the American University of Beirut and at Cornell University, she later studied photography at the New England School of Photography and the Maine Photographic Workshops. Since 2009 she has taught photographic workshops for teenage girls in Lebanon’s refugee camps. She now teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and exhibits her work worldwide.[3]

Career

Matar has made several series of photographs, including L'Enfant Femme, Unspoken Conversations, Women Coming of Age, A Girl and Her Room, Invisible Children, and Ordinary Lives. Her portraits explore gender studies and often consider varying national identities.[2] L'Enfant Femme depicts preteen girls living in the United States and the Middle East, and focuses on documenting the age between childhood and maturity.[4] Mothers and daughters are photographed together and present a universal nature of womanhood in the series Unspoken Conversations.[4] Matar began her series Invisible Children after a visit to Beirut in 2014. She noticed how many Syrian refugee children were on the streets begging for work and money.[5] This series documents the individuality of each child.[6] In 2017, Matar's work was included in the Biennale of the Contemporary Arab World held in Paris at the Arab World Institute.[7]

Publications
L'Enfant-Femme at Carroll and Sons
Matar's Ordinary Lives book

Solo exhibitions
  • 2007: The Veil, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA; 2007: Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; 2008: Center for Contemporary Arts, Abilene, TX; 2008: Council for Foreign Relations, New York, NY
  • 2008: Contrapuntal Lines, A tribute to Edward Said, Koppelman Gallery, Tufts University, Boston, MA
  • 2008: Women of Islam in the Aftermath of War, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL
  • 2008: Lebanon at the Crossroads, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI
  • 2009: Ordinary Lives, The Mosaic Rooms Gallery, London UK; 2009: Mt Ida College Gallery, Brookline MA; 2009: MANEGE, St. Petersburg by invitation, St. Petersburg, Russia; 2009: The Institute of Contemporary Art, ICA, Boston, MA; 2009: Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut; 2014: Arab-American Museum, Dearborn, MI
  • 2010: A Girl and Her Room, Gallery of Photography B&B, Bielsko Biala, Poland; 2010: Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA; 2011: The Mosaic Rooms at the A. M Qattan Foundation, London; 2011: Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX; 2012: Leica Gallery, Warsaw Poland; 2012: Umbrage Gallery, Brooklyn NY; 2012: Leica Headquarters Gallery, Solms, Germany; 2012: Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut; 2013: Galerie Lichtblick, Cologne, Germany; 2013: Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany; 2012: SouthEast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL; 2015: Galerie Eulenspiegel, Basel, Switzerland
  • 2013–2014: She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and The Arab World, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; 2015: Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; 2015: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; 2016: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
  • 2013: Ordinary Lives: Women of the Middle East, Sana Gallery, Singapore
  • 2012: Girls In Between: Portraits of Identity, Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA
  • 2014: Women of the Middle East, Alliance Francaise de Singapour; 2014: Toot Yung Art Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand
  • 2016: Invisible Children, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD; 2017: PhotoMed Liban, D-Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2016: Becoming: Girls, Women and Coming of Age, East Wing Gallery, Dubai UAE; 2017: RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco, CA
  • 2016: Deux Univers: Enfants et Femmes, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2016: Aftermath:The Fallout of War - America and the Middle East, Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL; 2017: The Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier, OH
  • 2016: Mortal Things: Portraits Look Back and Forth, Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA
  • 2017–2018: In Her Image, Photographs by Rania Matar, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX[10][11]
  • 2017: Action at a Distance, Angela Meleca Gallery, Columbus, OH
  • 2018: Rania Matar. She, Galerie Tanit, Beirut[12]

Awards

References
  1. "Looking at the Invisible Children Growing Up as Refugees". Hyperallergic. 2016-10-04. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  2. "Rania Matar: Invisible Children at C. Grimaldis Gallery". Photograph Magazine. 2016-10-07. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  3. "Dubaï : Rania Matar, Becoming Girls, Women and Coming of Age - The Eye of Photography". The Eye of Photography. 2016-01-12. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  4. "These Photos Beautifully Capture the Complex Relationship Between Mothers and Daughters". Slate. 2015-03-04. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  5. Urist, Jacoba. "How Should Art Address Human Rights?". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-04-15.
  6. "Giving Syrian children their identities back, one portrait at a time". Public Radio International. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  7. "Biennale of Arab Photographers : Interview with Rania Matar - The Eye of Photography". The Eye of Photography. 2017-09-27. Retrieved 2017-09-28.
  8. "photo-eye | Magazine". www.photoeye.com. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  9. "Notable Photo Books of 2016: Part 2". PDN Online. 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2017-03-15.
  10. "Picturing Women's Lives, From Beirut To Boston, Girl To Mother | Art&Seek". Art&Seek. 2018-02-02. Retrieved 2018-02-23.
  11. Coleman, Chloe (2017-12-15). "Perspective | Photography series explores mothers and daughters, and their relationships around the world". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-02-23.
  12. "Rania Matar. She". Galerie Tanit. 2018. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
  13. "Rania Matar Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation".
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