The artistic practice of filmmaker, photographer, and video artist Sky Hopinka centers Indigenous cultural forms and perspectives. His short and feature-length films not only provide representations of various expressions of Native culture but also convey the experiences of those who bear them, which includes Hopinka. Born in 1984 in Ferndale, Washington, where he was raised, Hopinka is part of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. He received a BA in liberal arts from Portland State University (2012), and an MFA in film, video, animation, and new genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2016). His many accolades include a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2022 ICP Infinity Award, and 2022 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. His work is in the collections of several institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Dallas Museum of Art, and Amon Carter Museum of American Art. Hopinka currently resides in New York City and is assistant professor of art, film, and visual studies at Harvard University.
Much of Hopinka’s work is informed by language. Learning and using language are ongoing subjects of interest for him. He himself has learned different Indigenous languages as an adult, specifically Chinuk Wawa and Ho-Chunk. The processes, while often difficult at times, have been rewarding for Hopinka as they are community building. He understands that a person cannot learn a language in isolation and must be in dialogue with others. Hopinka also has noted that language is constantly shifting. It changes in accordance with what is happening in the world culturally and politically. Therefore, when people stop using a language, which has been the fate of several Indigenous languages, the culture and community that created it can no longer grow and evolve; they die away as well.
Hopinka expresses the complexity of language in his films through layered imagery and a range of editing techniques. He separates sounds and images—two things that can occur onscreen but are not necessarily tied to each other, giving each element freedom. He also combines different modes of communication in his films, which can feature text, talking, and subtitles at once. These layers of media and information gesture toward the intricacies of language learning.
Accordingly, earlier films feature language lessons. Wawa (2014) combines interviews with Chinuk Wawa speakers and documentation of a class. Overlapping sounds, texts, and images articulate the multifaceted efforts required for language restoration. Kicking the Clouds (2021) also combines images of family, nature, and symbolic objects with a recording of a Pechanga language lesson given to his grandmother by her mother.
Hopinka has alluded to ancestors in other works using creative video effects, while also presenting artistic and cultural performances. I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become (2016), an elegy to Diane Burns, the Native poet and performance artist, includes footage of Burns reading with ghostly flickering figures. The otherworldly presences are Hopinka’s strategy for representation of the spirits of ancestors. They also appear in Subterranean Moon (2024), which juxtaposes a Seattle powwow with poetry and Hopinka’s ethereal forms.
In addition to layered images, sound, and text, Hopinka is known for color manipulation. In post-production, he will make the hues of his images hyper-saturated. While the effect can be surreal, it also is part of his effort to represent Native Americans and their cultures as bright and colorful, thus countering the ahistoric, anachronistic sepia or black-and-white tones in which they are usually seen.
This and Hopinka’s many other devices and techniques are ever-present in Mnemonics of Shape and Reason (2021), creating an enigmatic gestalt that communicates environmentalist concerns from a Native perspective. Commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the concise, compelling video recalls Hopinka’s resistance to a Western notion that people are entitled to knowledge, that any subject should be studied, documented, and made accessible to all. Conversely, he enjoys the “mystery of culture,” an idea that Mnemonics expresses through intriguing juxtapositions.
The video features overlapping inverted, saturated views across landscapes, under water, and above clouds. In still and moving images, it travels from land to sea and sky accompanied by layers of music and captured audio. The incongruous but interrelated views and sounds create a dense assemblage, which intermittently disintegrates into blurred lines. The breakdown of the images suggests the erosion of nature and collapse of histories. Midway through the video, this idea is reinforced by a poetic text superimposed over the images. It refers to the effects of colonial devastation on nature and wildlife habitats in a verse that describes the “serpents of land and water . . . decrying a humid world.” In Hopinka’s complex visual language, Mnemonics simultaneously alludes to memories of and nostalgia for the environment as well as a longing for the rescue of its future. –Kanitra Fletcher