Meryl McMaster is a Canadian artist with nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), Métis, British and Dutch ancestry. Her lens-based practice incorporates the production of hand crafted materials and performance forming a synergy that transports the viewer out of the ordinary and into a space of contemplation and introspection. She explores the self in relation to land, lineage, history, culture and the more-than-human world.
McMaster is the recipient of the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award, the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, the Canon Canada Prize, the Eiteljorg ContemporaryArt Fellowship, the OCAD U Medal and was short listed for the Recontres d’Arles New Discovery Award 2019, the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles 2019 and long listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award.
Her work has been acquired by significant public collections within Canada and the United States, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Montclair Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, the EiteljorgMuseum, and the National Museum of the American Indian.
McMaster’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Montclair Art Museum, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Merignac Photo, Canada House London, Ikon Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre, The Glenbow, The Rooms, Momenta Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, amongst others. From 2016-2020 her solo exhibition Confluence travelled to ninecities in Canada, including stops at the Richmond Art Gallery, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, and The Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery.
Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum, Nasher Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Sprengel Museum, Australian Centre for Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Les Rencontres d’Arles, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Heard Museum, and the Anchorage Museum, amongst others.
McMaster is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto, Canada) and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (Montréal, Canada).
