Sierra MacTavish
Interdisciplinary Artist | Collage, Video, Photography & Databending
About
Sierra MacTavish’s practice examines how place is perceived, recorded, and transformed. Working across photography, collage, moving image, and sound, she begins with close observation of environments and the fragments within them that are easily overlooked, fossils embedded in rock, roadside debris, reflections on water, and a flower growing in broken road.Drawn to patterns, textures, and visual interruptions that shift between the recognizable and the abstract, MacTavish uses these observations as source material for processes of fragmentation and distortion. Databending functions as both a method and material practice: photographs are edited as audio and reprocessed through visual synthesizers, producing glitches, altered colour, movement, and sound. She combines these fragments into works in which familiar subjects become unstable and difficult to locate.Her work considers place as something continually constructed rather than fixed, shaped by perception, technological mediation, and change. By disrupting the legibility and context of familiar environments, MacTavish examines how context influences what we notice, what we assign meaning to, and what remains unseen.
SELECTED WORKS
this was a stream, 2025, Fine Art Print, 7.68 x 8.93 in Framed in metal 9. 25 x 10.25 in
play, 2025, Fine Art Print, 4.25 x 4.25 in Framed in CD caddy 4.75 x 5.5 in
Untitled, 2024
Fine art print, 5 × 7 in
Framed in metal, 9.5 × 8.5 in
Coral 2025, Fine Art Print, 8 x 10 in Framed in metal
Fish, 2025, Recycled iPad in found frame assemblage, 7.7 × 5.3 in
Digital Landscapes, 2024, Framed photographic print, 8 × 10 in
In the Depths of Your Thoughts, 2023
Fine art print, 24 × 32 in
SELECTED FILMS
Sleep Program, 2024
Single-channel video, 24 second loop. Displayed on LCD monitor with headphones
Ephemeral Imprints, 2024
Single-channel video, 15 second loop. HD video projection with sound
Angel, 2024
Single-channel video, 24-second loop. Displayed on CRTV monitor with headphones
Under a Microscope, 2024
Single-channel video, 13 second loop
Displayed on LCD monitor with headphones
Untitled, 2023
Single-channel video, 38 second loop
Displayed on LCD monitor
Salmon Run, 2025
Single-channel video, 31 second loop
HD video projection with sound
RESIDENCIES
2025 Summer Institute at Plug In Contemporary Art Gallery
During this residency, I explored collaborative art-making with salvaged materials, focusing on history, place, and sustainability. My project, Signal in the Stream, centred on Colony Creek, a stream buried during Winnipeg’s development that still flows beneath the land where Plug In ICA now stands.Using archival maps, I traced the creek’s original path and documented the area through field recordings, photographs, and stamped impressions of nearby buildings. I then databent the images by editing them as sound, creating visual distortions. These images were later processed through a visual synthesizer to create ambient soundscapes.
The project resulted in a prototype mixed-media artist book combining processed images, site coordinates, impressions from surrounding buildings, and embedded sound. Through these methods, Signal in the Stream explores how hidden histories can still leave traces in the landscape and invites reflection on land, water, colonial development, and environmental justice.
[ S i g n a l ] i n [ t h e ]
S t r e a m, 2025, 4.25 x 5.5 inches, 33 pages, Interactive Art Book
Inkjet Print on Linen Paper and Transparency, NFC’s
Listen along to the sounds in
[ S i g n a l ] i n [ t h e ] S t r e a m.
Use the map to discover the sites of
[ S i g n a l ] i n [ t h e ] S t r e a m.
Colony Creek, 2025
Single-channel video, 30 second loop
Displayed on LCD monitor
Interested in commissions, collaborations, or exhibitions?
Land Acknowledgment: I am based on the unceded, ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, colonially known as "Vancouver".I acknowledge that these lands have been stewarded since time immemorial by the Indigenous peoples who continue to resist displacement and erasure. My work is grounded in an ongoing commitment to learning, accountability, and relationship-building that supports Indigenous sovereignty and justice through both words and action.This acknowledgment is not a substitute for reparative work, but a reminder that everything I create and share is shaped by being a guest on this land.