#MAMMerylMcMaster
Meryl McMaster crosses timescales with her dreamlike photographic self-portraiture. Working in Quebec and drawing from her nēhiyaw (Plains Cree), British, and Dutch ancestry, she constructs inventive sculptural garments and props to use in her large-format images. She then travels to site-specific landscapes important to family and cross-cultural history, wearing her ensembles for cinematic scenes grounded in place, lineage, and the natural world.
Featuring eleven prior and new photographic works as well as poetry and video, this exhibition explores the artist’s disruption of time. The new works are from her 2022 series “Stories of my Grandmothers | nōhkominak ācimowina”– their first showing in the United States. In this series, McMaster reassembles family stories from images, objects, and written and oral accounts of her Métis and Plains Cree grandmothers, recognizing the resilience of these women amid colonial duress.
Blending moments, lifetimes, generations, and geological eras, McMaster’s work reinforces the intersections between actual and imagined experience. With it, she calls for a future that nurtures and protects kin, and the land itself.
The new works were commissioned for the exhibition Meryl McMaster: Bloodline, co-curated by Sarah Milroy at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Ontario and Tarah Hogue at the Remai Modern in Saskatchewan.
Exhibition title design by Sébastien Aubin (Opaskwayak Cree Nation) / OTAMI - ᐅᑕᒥ.
Meryl McMaster: Chronologies is curated by Laura J. Allen, Curator of Native American Art.
MAM Conversations: Meryl McMaster
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Meryl McMaster joined Curator of Native American Art Laura J. Allen in a virtual artist's talk. McMaster and Allen discussed her practice and process, the aspect of portraiture in her work, and more, including her new photographs and her film niwaniskān isi kiya | I Awake To You (2023).
Image Credits:
1.) Installation view of the Montclair Art Museum’s exhibition, Meryl McMaster: Chronologies, with Do You Remember Your Dreams (2022) in the center. Photo: Jason Wyche/Montclair Art Museum.
2.) Installation view of the Montclair Art Museum’s exhibition, Meryl McMaster: Chronologies, with Echoes Across the Field (2022) on the left and I Listened as the World Became Silent (2022) on the right. Photo: Jason Wyche/Montclair Art Museum.
3.) Meryl McMaster (b. 1988), Echoes Across the Field, 2022. From the series “Stories of my Grandmothers | nōhkominak ācimowina.” Giclée print. 40 x 60 in.
4.) Installation view of the Montclair Art Museum’s exhibition, Meryl McMaster: Chronologies with Echoes Across the Field (2022) on the left, Edge of a Moment (2017) in the center, and Time’s Gravity (2015) on the right. Photo: Jason Wyche/Montclair Art Museum.
5.) Meryl McMaster (b. 1988), Edge of a Moment, 2017. Giclée print. 60 x 94.4 in.
Top: Detail from Meryl McMaster (b. 1988), Time’s Gravity, 2015. From the series “Wanderings.” Giclée print. 30 x 45 in.
All images of Meryl McMaster's work are courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain.
Meryl McMaster (Red Pheasant Cree Nation, member of Siksika Nation, British, Dutch, b. 1988) lives in Chelsea, Quebec. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Toronto’s OCAD University and many awards and accolades for her work. These include the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award, REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, Canon Canada Prize, and OCAD University Medal. She was shortlisted for the Les Rencontres d’Arles award and long listed for the Sobey Art Award. McMaster’s work has been acquired by significant public collections within Canada and the United States, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions and was recently a McCord Museum Artist in Residence in Montreal.
Meryl McMaster: Chronologies is made possible with generous support from the Lyn and Glenn Reiter Endowed Special Exhibition Fund, Patricia A. Bell, Patti and Jimmy Elliott, Tracy Higgins and James Leitner, Christine James and Nick DeToustain, Diana L. Johnson, Wendy and Andrew Lacey, and Margo and Frank Walter.
All MAM programs are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, The Vance Wall Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Museum members.
