> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Drawn Self-Portraits Materialized as Masks
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/drawn-self-portraits-materialized-as-masks/
- Published: 2015-08-12T02:05:28.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:47:01.000Z
- Description: For her Second Self photography series, Canadian artist Meryl McMaster asked her subjects to blindly draw single-line contours of their faces, which she then sculpted into wire masks.
- Author: Allison Meier
- Tags: Art, Museum of the American Indian, Photography, portraits, Review, Smithsonian Institution, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![Meryl McMaster, "Meryl 2" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself01.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Meryl 2” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

For her *Second Self* photography series, Canadian artist [Meryl McMaster](http://merylmcmaster.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) asked her subjects to blindly draw single-line contous of their faces, which she then sculpted into wire masks. Worn over their skin, all painted a ghostly and theatrical white, the large-scale portraits consider the construction and perception of identity.

Selections from the 2010–11 series are on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York. [*Meryl McMaster: Second Self*](http://www.nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item/?id=950&ref=hyperallergic.com)is a small exhibition in the long hallway just outside the longterm [*Infinity of Nations*](http://www.nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item/?id=901&ref=hyperallergic.com) installation, but worth a stop to see an emerging artist who, with distinct and striking imagery, is exploring the layers of identity. McMaster, based in Ottawa, Ontario, is a Plains Cree member of the Siksika Nation, which along with her Dutch and British ancestry inspires much of her art where heritage is a constantly evolving personal history.

!['Meryl McMaster: Second Self' installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself05.jpg)

‘Meryl McMaster: Second Self’ installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Since McMaster graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2010, her projects have included *[Ancestral](http://merylmcmaster.com/section/164673%5FAncestral.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)*, in which late 19th-century archive images of aboriginal people were projected on subjects, mixing the present and past. Later her *[In-Between Worlds](http://merylmcmaster.com/section/163115%5FIn%5FBetween%5FWorlds.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)* included elaborate costumes and talismans to consider cross-cultural influences, both indigenous and European. In one a dark bird-headed figure crouches in the snow, and in another human hands with sticks bound to fingers like claws and arms covered with feathers reach around a tree. Some of the images from *In-Between Worlds* are currently installed on the exterior of Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. Later this month, her new project *Wandering* opens at [the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts](http://www.iaia.edu/museum/exhibitions/upcoming/?ref=hyperallergic.com) in Santa Fe.

In all these series, the process of their creation is visible, and feels like something still in flux. The wire masks in *Second Self* are simultaneously abstract attempts to capture what should be most familiar — our own faces — and also a form of costuming, facilitating what we do everyday: play with the different selves we present as our own identities.

![Meryl McMaster, "Jin" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself20.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Jin” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

![Meryl McMaster, "Anthony" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself21.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Anthony” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

![Meryl McMaster, "Fred" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself22.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Fred” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

![Meryl McMaster, "Jordan" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself24.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Jordan” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

![Meryl McMaster, "Pia" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself26.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Pia” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

![Meryl McMaster, "Logan" (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself25.jpg)

Meryl McMaster, “Logan” (2010), digital chromogenic print, 36 x 36 inches (courtesy the artist and Katzman Contemporary)

!['Meryl McMaster: Second Self' installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself02.jpg)

‘Meryl McMaster: Second Self’ installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

!['Meryl McMaster: Second Self' installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/08/secondself04.jpg)

‘Meryl McMaster: Second Self’ installation view (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

[Meryl McMaster: Second Self](http://www.nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item/?id=950&ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York (One Bowling Green, Lower Manhattan) through December 11\.*