Meryl McMaster is an Ottawa based artist whose photographic work explores the tensions complicating our understanding of personal identity. Specifically, her recent bodies of work have explored the liminality of being betwixt her Indigenous (Plains Cree) and European (British/Dutch) cultures and the conflict found at the intersection of self-exploration and heritage.
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 how we construct our sense of self through lineage, history and culture.
The works within the exhibition Threads of Self are a selection of photographs from three bodies of work In-Between Worlds (2010-15), Wanderings(2015) and Bring me to this place (2017).
In-Between Worlds explores her experience of belonging to mixed-cultural heritages. In these images, she mixes and transforms her ancestral heritage while inserting her own body into visual spaces that reflected both the inspiration she experiences from remote, contemplative experiences in the Canadian wilderness as well as the concept of being ‘betwixt’.
Wanderings is a journey into the unknown and a contemplation on the limitations and possibilities of the self. Within this series, dreamlike experiences are linked by a red thread connecting her to the past. The past both inspires and restricts her wandering path; it is the past that informs us of who we are and who we might become. The wandering soul in each image is a metaphor for a life in which we discover things both new and different that contribute to experiences that may not immediately make sense, but eventually become clearer as we grow older.
Bring me to this place takes her atop Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump in Alberta, a historically and culturally important ancestral site. The image recognizes the erasure of key species in her ancestral ecosystem and their absence there today as a reminder of the broader impacts of colonization on human beings and their environment. She wants to bring specific awareness to the broad consequences of colonization and how the mentality of greed and/or lack of foresight is still impacting us today. Her work isn’t intended to resolve this dilemma but rather to create an opportunity for introspection and conversation. Each of us has a complicated relationship with the past, with gaps and biases, and it is important for her to expose and explore these gaps so that we may encounter our next moments better prepared.
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McMaster belongs to a generation of Indigenous artists who, by means of photography and a performative approach, explore First Nations' identity and their cultural horizon. McMaster completed a BFA at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto (2010), where she specialized in photography. Her works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Great Britain. She is the recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation's REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, Ottawa (2017), and the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, Indianapolis (2013). She was also a finalist for the Sobey Art Award in 2016.
