Rania Daniel

All proceeds from the sale of this work will be donated to The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund for Hurricane Harvey relief.  All donations to The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund will be matched up to $5M by Howard Lutnick and Cantor Fitzgerald.

Rania Daniel attended the American University of Beirut in Lebanon and UCLA Los Angeles with degrees in Business Administration and Interior Architecture.  Rania Daniel’s first solo exhibition at Deborah Colton Gallery was in 2011, titled Urban Illusion.  During FotoFest 2014, Daniel’s work was presented also at Deborah Colton Gallery. Both exhibitions attracted interest from a prominent local, national and international audience.  In 2016 Rania Daniel co-curated and organized a major art auction that encompassed all exhibition spaces at Deborah Colton Gallery, titled No Lost Generation, which benefited Syrian Refugee children through UNICEF.  Rania Daniel’s work has been selected for the Glassell School of Art – Museum of Fine Arts: Houston Auction & Benefit the past two years and her work has been placed in many esteemed collections in the United States and internationally.

Rania Daniel’s work is essentially an attempt to reconstruct a narrative.  Her point of departure is the past, where memory and nostalgia are the important elements.  Each painting becomes a narrative of the artist walking in the city of Beirut, witnessing the movement of a contemporary city that has survived civil war and unrest while relentlessly rebuilding itself.   Oscillating between modern and old, the city’s architecture symbolizes the disappearing heritage and collective memory of the Lebanese. As Rania observes, “It becomes the symbol of our displacement and division in different, distinct neighborhoods after the civil war created mental barriers that exist up to this day. Through my movement in the city, I witness the contrast, while passing through the different areas and neighborhoods.” Rania’s work is creating a recollection of the city in the present. The notion of transformed identity is important too, the duality of being both an American and Lebanese, the physical move from one place to another, absorbing constantly new experiences, shifting in time and space. This shift is depicted in the movement of the city and the artist’s own movement, walking in the city, taking photographs. The movement of the city analogs Rania’s own reflective introspection.