For our second installment of the Studio Happy Hour, we visited virtually with photographer Rania Matar. She shared some work from her past and gave us a sneak peek of her new quarantine project — taking portraits from a distance. Rania is a Boston-based artist, and the new work was recently featured in the Boston Globe. 

About the Photographer

Rania Matar is a Guggenheim 2018 Fellow.

Rania Matar is a Lebanese-born American photographer. Matar’s work has been widely published and exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and more. A mid-career retrospective of her work was recently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in a solo exhibition: In Her Image: Photographs by Rania Matar.

Matar has received several grants and awards including a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, 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.

Matar’s work is in the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private collections worldwide. She is currently associate professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and regularly offers workshops, talks, class visits and lectures at museums, galleries, schools and colleges in the US and abroad