Field Trip: Studio Visit with Rania Matar

Join the CoDesign Collaborative community and Misstropolis for a studio visit exploring architecture, design, and photography.

Alae (In the Mirror), Beirut, Lebanon, 2020 • © Rania Matar

Join the CoDesign Collaborative community for a studio visit with the renowned photographer Rania Matar on Tuesday, September 22, from 12 – 1 pm ET. Organized in partnership with Misstropolis and hosted at The Project Space, a new collaborative venue between Robert Klein Gallery and SEA-DAR, the Field Trip will center on Matar’s photographic exploration of place, identity, and the built environment in her exhibition, Where Do I Go?

Trained originally as an architect, Matar pays close attention to the emotional resonance of built environments. The exhibition’s title derives from graffiti discovered by the artist on a damaged wall in Beirut, a question that echoes throughout the series both literally and emotionally. Working collaboratively with women of different generations and backgrounds, Matar constructs portraits that blur the line between documentation and shared testimony. Many of the photographs unfold within abandoned hotels, aging theaters, fractured apartments, and religious spaces scarred by decades of conflict and political uncertainty.

Field Trips are a benefit of membership in the Design Impact Society and Corporate Membership. General Members (Individual+) register at a discounted rate. Not-yet-Members can reserve tickets for $25/person. Please email membership@codesigncollaborative.org for help with registration.

About Rania Matar
Rania Matar is a Guggenheim 2018 Fellow. She was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. Rania Matar’s work has been widely published and exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and more. A mid-career retrospective of her work was recently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in a solo exhibition: In Her Image: Photographs by Rania Matar.

She has received several grants and awards including a 2022 Leica Women Foto Project Award, 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, 2011 Legacy Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 2021, 2011 and 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowships. In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition. Her work is in the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private collections worldwide.

About Misstropolis & Robin Hauck
Misstropolis is a Boston-based online journal covering art, culture and ideas. Robin Hauck is a passionate researcher, writer and advocate of arts and culture, especially in her home city of Boston. Living all over the world including Ohio, Colorado, Los Angeles, London and New York, Robin developed a deep appreciation for art’s ability to expose, translate and embody the most challenging and important issues of our times. Robin founded Misstropolis in order to explore the intersection of art, history, culture and identity politics, and champion work by thought-leading female artists.

She received her Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and her Bachelors in English and Creative Writing from Denison University. She is active on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and VIA Art Fund and travels extensively to learn about art in diverse contexts. She is Secretary of the Board of Directors of Boston Art Review and participates in local advocacy around issues of family homelessness as a member of the Advisory Council of Horizons for Homeless Children.