Rania Matar

Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984.  As a Lebanese-born American artist and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography.

Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, and more.  It is part of the permanent collections of several museums, institutions, and private collections.  A mid-career retrospective of her work was recently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and at the American University of Beirut Museum.

Matar received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2011 Legacy Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 2011 and 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowships.  In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition. 

She has published three books: 

L’Enfant-Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009.

She is currently working on her fourth book, SHE (2021), published by Radius Books.