There Once Was A Song – Discussion with Meryl McMaster

Discussion with Meryl McMaster, and Hélène Samson, Curator, Photography at the McCord Museum and Jonathan Lainey, Curator, Indigenous Cultures at the McCord Museum.

There Once Was A Song by Meryl McMaster, an artist of nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), British and Dutch heritage,  examines the relation between humans and nature through three original works inspired by late 19^th century glass bell jars from the Museum’s Material Culture collection. Symbols of another era, these jars containing mounted animals and dried plants were the starting point for Meryl McMaster’s creative process.

For the first time, Meryl McMaster has created an exhibition where she combines photography, her preferred art form, with other media like video and sculpture. Her work questions the desire to capture and confine the natural world in order to freeze it in time.