Miya Turnbull grew up driving tractors on a family farm near Onoway, Alberta. From a young age, if you asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, the answer was “Artist” every single time. Her parents believed in her, and that made all the difference.
Being biracial (Japanese and British ancestry) in a world that loves a tidy box meant she spent a lot of her childhood answering the question “but where are you really from?” Eventually, she stopped trying to answer it and started making art about it instead. Her mask work grew from that shift: photo-realistic, life-sized casts of her own face, altered, cut apart, and rebuilt in layers, distorted, multiplied, and never quite resolved, so she just keeps making more.
Miya’s work has travelled across Canada, the US, Europe and Asia, and in 2025, she was honoured to be long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. She has also brought the masks into live performance, collaborating with dance artists from Canada and Japan.
She loves being near the ocean and has called Halifax, NS, home for the past 25 years, where she lives with her husband and daughter, and has found the East Coast to be fertile ground for her practice.
***
Which ’hood are you in?
Halifax, Nova Scotia
What do you do?
I’m an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with self-portrait masks, photography, video and performance.
What are you currently working on?
Currently, I’m expanding my collection of masks and sculptures, and developing a new body of work with “skin-suits”: spandex bodysuits that are either stuffed or stretched and pinned directly to the wall, shaped from tracings of my own body in multiple positions. It’s an extension of the same questions the masks ask, but now the whole body is the subject.
Where can we find your work?
Solo Exhibits:
– Khyber Centre for the Arts, Window Gallery, “Self-Portrait”: Halifax, NS. On until May 13th, 2026.
– Eastern Edge Artist-Run Centre, Main Gallery, “Traces“: St. John’s, NL. On until May 23rd, 2026.
Group Exhibits:
– Florida State University, Museum of Fine Art (MoFA FSU): Tallahassee, FL. On until June 27th, 2026.
– Photo E(a)st Festival, Beaverbrook Art Gallery: Fredericton, NB. May 30th-Sept 6th, 2026.
