You have until January 28th, 2016 to visit the exhibition Becoming: Girls, Women and Coming of Age by Rania Matar at East Wing, Dubai.
“Becoming: Girls, Women and Coming of Age” seeks to raise the question, “Do we ever stop ‘coming of age’?” On our path from childhood to adolescence, into motherhood and as we reach our full maturity, do we ever stop evolving, growing and developing? Focusing mostly on young girls and women, she studies the ways they communicate their notions of adulthood: from documenting adolescents in their bedrooms and considering how they curate these private spaces; to portraying the unspoken bonds between mothers and daughters – her keen observations of young girls in all these stage of life acutely reveal how these women fiercely express their individuality as they continue to grow and change.
The main focus of this exhibition centers around Rania’s most recent body of work, ‘L’Enfant – Femme’, in this body of work her subjects are young women and girls teetering on a fine line between childhood and adolescence. She observes how these girls mimic certain body language and postures, which clearly exhibit their conceptions about adulthood. Additionally, the exhibition also presents selections from her past works, “A Girl and Her Room”, “Invisible Children” and “Unspoken Conversations”. Each body of work explores a different chapter of maturity and illustrates Matar’s interest in the universality of how women of all ages navigate different transitional moments in life.
“My work is very much about universality. This almost became the thesis for most of my projects. Identifying with and belonging to two cultures (Lebanese and American) that are often portrayed as very different, almost opposites and feeling that I am the same person while being equally part of both, made me want to focus on our sameness, our universality and our common humanity. This is consistent throughout my work – it is part of my own story and my own identity, and that of my daughters. While each girl/woman has her own individual story there is universality to life at those transitional junctures.
Born and raised in Lebanon, Rania Matar moved to the United States in 1984. Originally trained as an architect at the American University of Beirut and at Cornell University in the US, she studied photography at the New England School of Photography and Maine Photographic Workshops. She has taught photographic workshops for teenage girls in Lebanon’s refugee camps since 2009 and presently teaches Personal Documentary photography at the Massachusette College of Art and Design.
EXHIBITION
Becoming: Girls, Women and Coming of Age
Rania Matar
From December 10th to January 28th, 2016
East Wing
Limestone House # 12
PO Box 506810
Dubai International Financial Centre
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
+971 50 553 3879
Saturday through Thursday 10:00 am – 3:00 pm and 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm or by appointment
http://www.east-wing.org
http://www.raniamatar.com
