Obscura Gallery presents “Where do I Go,” by Rania Matar, with a photographic exhibition from the recent book of the same name. The exhibit and supporting book are collaborations with the young women of Lebanon, seeking collectively to commemorate and to reimagine the future of a country defined by half a century of conflict and catastrophe. The year 2025 marked fifty years since the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. Half a century later, Lebanon continues to endure the aftermath of the Civil War, compounded by economic collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut Port explosion of August 4, 2020, and yet other wars in 2024 and 2026. Amid this unraveling, Rania found hope and inspiration in the young generation of women. She collaborated with them to tell their stories and to focus on their strength, creativity, dignity, and resilience, as they considered their options. Where Do I Go? became the title of this series and the book. Rania describes the images as her love letter to the women of Lebanon.
The book signing takes place on Saturday, October 24 at 3:30pm and is followed by an artist reception from 4-6pm.
As a Lebanese-American artist and mother, Matar has significant cross-cultural experience, and her personal narrative informs her photography. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide, including Museum of Fine Arts/Boston, LA County Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, L’Institut du Monde Arabe, Fotografiska, and others. She currently has a solo show at the The Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art. Her work is part of the permanent collections of numerous museums around the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2023, and the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Matar is the recipient of a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2022 Leica Women Photo Project Award, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2021 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant, among others. She was a finalist for Oskar Barnack Award 2023, Arnold Newman Prize 2022, and Outwin Portrait Competition 2022 with an exhibition at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Matar published five books: Where Do I Go?, 2026; SHE, 2021; L’Enfant-Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009.
