2025 Limited Edition

Meryl McMaster describes this as ‘formative self-portrait, dream-like imagery’ in keeping with her familiar theme of identity and how we form our sense of self through land, lineage, history, and culture.

niwaniskān isi kiya | I Awake to You presents McMaster’s connection to her female forebears in the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, where her father grew up. In the image she is rising up from a wintery landscape. “I am listening to the earth, the landscape of my family,” explains McMaster. “Through it I have just been transported to another place, one of my paternal grandmothers.”

This image is a still from a film of the same name, which she made for the multi-venue 2024-2025 exhibition of her work, nikihci- āniskotāpān | Bloodline organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The film is now in the collection of the Remai Modern, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Meryl McMaster (b.1988) is a member of the Siksika Nation. She is one of Canada’s most intriguing, accomplished and celebrated artists. Since 2010, when she graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, she has participated in more than forty group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, and Italy. Her art has been acquired by numerous public collections within Canada and internationally.