Additional Images

Provenance:

Courtesy of the artist; Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto; Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montréal.

The Work & Artist Bio

Fawn, 2010, a digital C-Print, plays tricks with our eyes and with what we think we know about the relationship between animals and humans. The western hierarchical tradition upends or disrupts the natural order and Meryl McMaster calls on her “dual heritage,” Plains Cree and European, to help us see better. Fawn is a foundational work, her three main early series being, “Ancestral,” “In Between Worlds” and “Wanderings.” Fawn is from the “Ancestral” series which was shown in the exhibition titled, “Confluence,” her first solo exhibition mounted by the Carlton University Art Gallery which toured to The Rooms, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery. For this series she used her own face and that of her father, artist curator and writer, Gerald McMaster. In Fawn it is her father, and the fawn, watching us through the same eyes and telling us to look, and see.

Meryl McMaster received her BFA in Photography from the Ontario College of Art and Design University (2010) and is currently based in Québec, Canada. Known for her large-format self-portraits that have a distinct performative quality, she explores questions of self through land, lineage, history, and culture, with specific reference to her mixed nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), British and Dutch ancestry. McMaster’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Remai Modern (2023), McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2023), Montclair Museum (2023), Urban Shaman (2021), Merignac Photo (2021), McCord Museum (2021), Canada House London (2020), Ikon Gallery (2019), Ryerson Image Centre (2019), Glenbow Museum (2019), The Rooms (2018) Momenta Biennale Montréal (2017), Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (2015), and Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian New York (2015), among others. Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2022), Amon Carter Museum of American Art (2022), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2021), Heard Museum (2021), Anchorage Museum (2020), Australian Centre for Photography, Australia (2019), the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (2019), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2018), Ottawa Art Gallery (2018, 2019), Oklahoma State University Museum of Art (2017), and Art Gallery of Guelph (2017), to name a few. She was shortlisted for the Rencontres d’Arles New Discovery Award 2019, Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles 2019, and longlisted for the 2016 Sobey Art Award and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award, REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, Canon Canada Prize, Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship and OCAD U Medal. Her work is in numerous collections including the Canadian Museum of History; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; the National Museum of the American Indian and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Meryl McMaster is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montréal.

Picturing the Red Line, Border Crossings Issue 146, 2018

Meryl McMaster, Border Crossings Issue 141, 2017

Artist's Website

Stephen Bulger Gallery

Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain