Louder Than Hearts: Women Photographers from the Arab World and Iran

About the Curator

Rania Matar

Born (1964) 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. 

Her photography captures intimate moments that transcend borders and cultures and explores themes of personal & collective identity through photos of women in the US and the Middle East.

Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Fotografiska, Institut du Monde Arabe, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and more. It is part of the permanent collections of several museums.

She had solo shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, American University of Beirut Museum, Huntsville Museum of Art, Rollins Museum of Art, and Fitchburg Museum of Art.

Matar received several awards including: 2022 Leica Women Foto Award, 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2021 (2011, 2007) Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grants, 2011 Griffin Museum of Photography Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Oskar Barnack Award 2023, Arnold Newman Prize 2022, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with an exhibition at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery/DC, and Taylor Wessing Prize with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the ICA/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition.

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