Meryl McMaster earned 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. Meryl is a citizen of Siksika Nation in Alberta and her family is also from Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan.

McMaster’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Heard Museum, Remai Modern, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Montclair Museum, Urban Shaman, Merignac Photo, McCord Museum, Canada House London, Ikon Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre, Glenbow Museum, Momenta Biennale Montreal, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian New York, amongst others.

Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Cummer Museum, Autry Museum, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Sprengel Museum, Heard Museum, Anchorage Museum, Australian Centre for Photography, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, National Gallery of Canada, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Denver Art Museum, Pérez Art Museum and Art Gallery of Alberta, to name a few.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the King Charles Ill”s Coronation Medal, 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. 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.

McMaster is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto, Canada) and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (Montréal, Canada)