On March 11, Rania Matar: Oceans at My Door will open at the Fitchburg Art Museum. Matar is a Lebanese-American photographer who works between the US and the Middle East, documenting girls and women in a cross-cultural examination of personal identity.
This exhibition of photographic works celebrates FAM’s acquisition of Matar’s portfolio of 13 photographs titled SHE. The artist says about this series, “I am focusing in this project on young women in their twenties – the ages of my own daughters. They are leaving the cocoon of home and entering adulthood… Here, I am photographing them in the larger environment they find themselves in after leaving home, the global and complicated backdrop that now constitutes their lives in transition.”
The exhibition will include other works from SHE as well as later works from Where Do I Go? The latter series focuses on Lebanese women after a series of national disasters, including the 2019 uprising protesting corruption and inflation, the pandemic, and the 2020 Port of Beirut explosions. Where Do I Go? presents inner strength and beauty, and provides hope for a generation of Lebanese women.
“Rania Matar’s stunning photographs are both a cross-cultural exploration and a universal statement about womanhood, femininity, and resilience. I am thrilled that FAM has had the opportunity to add SHE to our collection and am delighted to present it in a wider context of Rania’s work. Each photograph is more tender and more powerful than the last,” says curator Lauren Szumita.
Press release from Fitchburg Art Museum
