S. Maria Brandt is a German-raised Croatian multidisciplinary artist working primarily lens-based in Ottawa, Canada. She uses alternative processes, digital photography, post-production, and sculpture.

Whether she visually processes food, people, random objects, or architecture, her works meditate on the perishable and the fears of aging and dying. She gains inspiration from her complex history, the driving force behind the connections she establishes to present events: waste, climate change, economic disruption, poverty, hunger, migration, and survival.

She studied photography at the School of The Photographic Arts: in Ottawa. Her work is held in public and private collections in Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe.

Rooted in photographic history and theory, she recognizes both the potential and failure of traditional photo-based arts. Her cross-genre approach includes environmental studies, food science, and a Canadian-specific understanding of the biome with influences growing up in Europe, extended travels in Australia and Asia, and two decades of making a living in the Caribbean. 

As a lifelong student, she explores the complexity of the human spirit as it relates to her personally, the collective behavior, and how she can bring her work into the search for solutions.

She is engaging with contemporary art trends to elevate and understand everyday objects and present the politicization and radicalization of the everyday. Thus she emphasizes the increasingly fractured world and the deep fault lines running through the human collective represented in the place a home symbolizes both in her chosen home Canada and the world at large.