ARTIST TALK: SKY HOPINKA in conversation with SHERI PASQUARELLA

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General Ticket: $10

Member Ticket: $5

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Explore the interpretation of homeland and landscape with award-winning Indigenous visual artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka. A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Hopinka’s work examines the correlation between language and culture in relation to home and land. Joined in conversation by The Church’s Executive Director Sheri Pasquarella, Hopinka will speak about his body of work, including the four video works included in This Land: Considering the American Landscape, his creative process, and the importance of Indigenous cinema in our cinematic landscape. Following the discussion there will be a Q&A with the audience and the opportunity to view the works in the main gallery space.

Hopinka has described his work to Filmmaker Magazine, saying: “deconstructing language is a way for me to be free from the dogma of traditional storytelling and then, from there, to explore or purpose more of what Indigenous cinema has the possibility to look like.”  The award-winning filmmaker, whose films have shown in various festivals including Sundance, New York Film Festival, among others, digs deep into the personal and is reflected through documentary and other forms of non-fiction media.

Currently an assistant professor of film for Harvard University, Hopinka invites audiences to learn, reflect, and examine the Indigenous landscape of this land.

Stop by during our exhibition hours Thursday – Monday, 11 AM – 5 PM, to view Hopinka’s work in person and to take in the work of over a dozen additional artists included in This Land.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

SKY HOPINKA

Photo courtesy the artist

ABOUT SKY

SKY HOPINKA (Ho-Chunk Nation/ Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non-fiction forms of media.

Hopinka’s films have played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Courtisane Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film Festival. His work was part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial and Prospect.5 in 2001. He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and participated in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He has had a solo exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. Hopinka is the recipient of the Infinity Award in Art from the International Cetner and the Alpert Award for Film/Video and fellowships including The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at ...