Meryl McMaster is a Canadian artist based in the town of Chelsea, Quebec. McMaster is nêhiyaw from Red Pheasant Cree Nation, a member of the Siksika Nation, British and Dutch. Her photography explores questions of how our sense of self is constructed through land, lineage, history, and culture. Her distinct approach to photographic portraiture and self-portraiture incorporates the spontaneity of photography, the manual production of objects or sculptural garments that she creates in her studio and performance. In her works, these media form a mosaic that illustrates a journey of self-discovery as she explores the tensions complicating our understanding of personal identity. Her work invokes a sense of the otherworldly, transporting herself and the viewer out of ordinary life and enlarging our understandings of inherited historical narratives.
