The Fitchburg Art Museum is thrilled to announce an exhibition celebrating its recent acquisition of Rania Matar’s stunning portfolio SHE. Matar is a Lebanese-American photographer internationally renowned for her explorations of cross-cultural identity and femininity. The arresting, intimate portraits in SHE evoke the transitional states of Becoming, what Matar describes as “the fraught beauty and vulnerability of growing up” as a young woman. This portfolio will be shown alongside other works from Matar’s subsequent series Where Do I Go?, an ongoing project that focuses on Lebanese women at a crossroad as they navigate national crises of corruption, inflation, lockdown, and shortages.

The constant presence of passageways—open doors, windows, halls, waterways—in these featured series alludes to Matar’s abiding interest in the personal journey of developing female subjectivity. She studies the process of young women’s self-actualization amidst political and environmental catastrophe, photographing them as they pass through liminal spaces of ruin and beauty alike.