As a Lebanese-American artist and mother, Matar’s cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography.Her work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide including Museum of Fine Arts/Boston, LACMA, ICA/Boston, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, L’Institut du Monde Arabe, Fotografiska, and more. 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 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.