Calling Me Home, from the series As immense as the sky
- Title:
- Calling Me Home, from the series As immense as the sky
- Collection:
- Introduction to Photography Collections at Cornell
- Set:
- History of photography
Inequality and legacies of discrimination
Landscape and the Environment - Creator:
- McMaster, Meryl
- Creation Date:
- 2019
- ID Number:
- 2019
- File Name:
- 2019.051.jpg
- Work Type:
- Photograph
- Materials/Techniques:
- digital chromogenic color prints
- Subject:
- Indigenous peoples--Ethnic identity Racially-mixed people - Canada
Race and identity.
Nêhiyaw (Plains Cree)
culture/folklore
Art and Photography
contemporary art - Measurement:
- 101.6 x 152.4 (Image) (centimeters, height x width)
- Description:
- A figure with a stylized buffalo skull mask - left half yellow and right half blue, with black horns - holds a rope on a lake in the twilight. The sky is light and the blue clouds are edged in pink and gold; the lake reflects them in small ripples and the land is just a band of low hills between. The figure is mysterious, it holds a coil of rope in one hand, and the rope is flowing out into the lake from the other. Their human face cannot be seen, apart from their eyes. The buffalo skull has little round off-center black eyes, and is asymmetrical, with a wagon wheel on the left forehead and a long thin red triangle on the right center, it has a long beard of thin tan fabric strips.
This work belongs to McMaster’s series As Immense as the Sky, which draws inspiration from the myths and history of the nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), part of McMaster’s cultural inheritance. As with earlier series, she plays multiple roles in realizing the final, highly cinematic tableau: photographer, performer, costumer, prop maker, and location scout. In this work, McMaster stands at Lake Diefenbaker, Saskatchewan, as the Buffalo Child Stone. The story tells of a human infant who is lost when he falls from his parents’ sled. The child is discovered by a herd of buffalo who raise him as one of their own. In adulthood he learns that he is human, but he does not wish to choose between his human and buffalo families. Unable to occupy both worlds at once, he chooses instead to be transformed into a tremendous stone. The story resonates with McMaster, whose dual heritage—Indigenous and European—is central to her personal identity and artistic explorations. The stone of the myth was a four hundred and forty ton glacial boulder that once stood near to where McMaster stands in the photograph. It was sacred to the nêhiyaw and a gathering site. In 1966, the stone was destroyed by the Canadian government in order to progress with the construction of the man-made Lake Diefenbaker, in spite of protests to preserve it. In embodying this lost object, McMaster both revives it and points to its destruction, a little-known incident in the long history of colonial dispossession and cultural genocide in Canada. The artist’s eyes peek out of the mask she has created for the Buffalo Child Stone, giving it life, and a rope trails from one of her hands to the water where the actual stone is submerged in pieces, perhaps signifying a resuscitation. It draws out connections between colonization, industrial development, environmental change, and cultural loss. At the same time, it proffers a form of reclamation, or at least a way to continue to engage with a part of the earth, a sacred place, that no longer exists, through the assertion of what was lost and its creative reimagining. —Kate Addleman-Frankel, The Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography , Johnson Museum of Art - Notes:
- Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum panel.
- Cite As:
- Meryl McMaster (Canadian, born 1988). Calling me home, from the series As Immense as the Sky, 2019. Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum panel, Edition 3/5, frame: 104.1 x 154.9 cm. Acquired through the Stephanie L. Wiles Endowment, supplemented by the Jennifer, Gale, and Ira Drukier Fund, TR 10219.
- Repository:
- Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The copyright status and copyright owners of most of the images in the Mellon Teaching Sets Collection are unknown. Whenever possible, information on current rights owners is included with the image. Digitization took place at varied times from items held at Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in service of a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cornell is providing access to low-resolution, non-downloadable versions of the materials as a digital aggregate under an assertion of fair use for non-commercial research and educational use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. For more information about these volumes, please contact the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at museum@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.