Author Description

From a rising generation of indigenous artists in Canada, Meryl McMaster (b. 1988, Ottawa) uses photography to explore identity and its distinct cultural landscapes with extraordinary visual impact. Creating elaborate, sculptural garments and props, her performative self-portraits present journeys which are both actual and imaginative, into the realms of her ancestors. McMaster is of the nêhiyawak community (Plains Cree) and a member of the Siksika First Nation (Alberta, Canada) on her father's side, and Euro-Canadian (British and Dutch) on her mother's. In her recent series As Immense as the Sky (2019), McMaster draws on place-based narratives, memory and self. Captured across ancestral sites in Saskatchewan and early settlements in Ontario and Newfoundland, she interprets, and re-stages patrimonial stories collected from relatives and community knowledge-keepers.