Rania Matar

Artist Biography

Born and raised in Lebanon, Matar moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born Palestinian/American artist 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 shows, including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Carnegie Museum of Art, ICA/Boston, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fotografiska, Institut du Monde Arabe, and more. It is part of the permanent collections of several museums.

A mid-career retrospective of her work was on view at Cleveland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the American University of Beirut Museum. Upcoming solo exhibitions include the Middlebury Museum of Art, and the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University.

Matar received several awards including a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2022 Leica Women Foto Project, 2021 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grants, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2011 Griffin Museum of Photography Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Oskar Barnack Award 2023, Arnold Newman Prize 2022, Outwin Portrait Competition with an exhibition at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery/DC, and Taylor Wessing Prize with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

She recently curated “Louder Than Hearts”, a group exhibition of women from the Arab World and Iran at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

Matar serves on the board of BeMA, the Beirut Museum of Art.

She published four books: SHE, 2021; L’Enfant-Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009.

She is working on her upcoming book: 50 Years Later: Where Do I Go?, 2026.

 

Rania Matar is represented by Galerie Tanit Beirut/Munich.

 

Website

Exhibitions
Featured
PHOTO LONDON 2025

From May 14, 2025 to May 18, 2025

Featured
Where Do I Go?
50 Years Later
Rania Matar

From April 10, 2025 to May 22, 2025

Featured
PARIS PHOTO 2024

From November 07, 2024 to November 10, 2024

Featured
ART DÜSSELDORF 2024

From Friday April 12, 2024 to Sunday April 14, 2024

Featured
Paris Photo 2023

From November 9, 2023 to November 12, 2023

Featured
PARIS PHOTO 2018

From November 8, 2018 to November 11, 2018

Featured
Coups de Cœur
Collective Exhibition

From August 31, 2023 to September 22, 2023

Featured
Paper Trail
50 years
Collective Exhibition

From November 23, 2022 to December 23, 2022

Featured
PARIS PHOTO 2022

From November 10, 2022 to November 13, 2022

Featured
15 Years, Crossed Perspectives
Collective Exhibition

From November 4, 2022 to January 7, 2023

Featured
I Am One Acquainted With The Night
Collective Exhibition

From June 5, 2021 to September 25, 2021

Featured
Two Shows
Rania Matar | Bongchull Shin

From December 12, 2018 to February 26, 2019

Featured
She
Rania Matar

From April 12, 2018 to June 1, 2018

Featured
Féminités Plurielles
Collective Exhibition

From February 8, 2018 to April 5, 2018

Selected Works
Lea, Beirut, Lebanon, 2019

She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water.

She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs.

‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against.
Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.

— ROMAN PAYNE, THE WANDERESS

From Rania Matar’s book SHE (2021)

Lea, Beirut, Lebanon, 2019
Rania Matar
Rania Matar, Lea, Beirut, Lebanon
Archival Pigment Print on Baryta Paper
2019
94 cm x 112 cm

She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water.

She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs.

‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against.
Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.

— ROMAN PAYNE, THE WANDERESS

From Rania Matar’s book SHE (2021)

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