Sky Hopinka (born 1984) is a Native American visual artist and filmmaker who is a member of the

Ho-Chunk Nation The Ho-Chunk Nation (Ho-Chunk language: ) is a federally recognized tribe of the Ho-Chunk with traditional territory across five states in the United States: Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. The other federally recognized trib ...

and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of

Luiseño The Luiseño or Payómkawichum are an indigenous people of California who, at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century, inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging from the present-day southern part of ...

people. Hopinka was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Grant in 2022.

Early life and education

Hopinka was born in Ferndale,

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, and moved to

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban a ...

as a teenager. Hopinka's undergraduate education was at

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decad ...

(PSU), where he became interested in documentary film. He received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

in liberal arts. While at PSU, he started to take interest in Indigenous language revitalization. In 2013 he moved to

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...

, the homeland of the Ho-Chunk Nation, and enrolled at the

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in film, video, and new genres.

Career

Hopinka's work deals with personal interpretations of

homeland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...

and landscape; the correlation between language and culture in relation to home and land. Hopinka has said: ''“Deconstructing language hrough cinemais a way for me to be free from the dogma of traditional storytelling and then, from there, to explore or propose more of what Indigenous cinema has the possibility to look like.”'' His film and video work has been featured a
Media City Film Festiva
ref name="Media City Film Festival">l
the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

, the

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

, the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition ...

Hessel Museum of Art The CCS Hessel Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of Bard College, in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York. The museum was built in 2006. The Hessel Museum is housed in the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS). The Museum draws from t ...

at Bard College, Sundance Film Festival,

ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous film and media arts festival, held annually in Toronto in the month of October. The festival focuses on the film, video, radio, and new media work of Indigenous, Abori ...

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

Ann Arbor Film Festival The Ann Arbor Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Ann Arbor in the U.S. state of Michigan. Established in 1963, it is the fourth-oldest film festival in North America (after the Yorkton Film Festival, 1947; Columbus International Film ...

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, i ...

, among others. Hopinka organized a film program called ''What Was Always Yours and Never Lost'' focused on Indigenous experimental cinema. The film series began in 2016 and was later shown at the 2019

Teaching

Hopinka is former associate professor at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located ...

in British Columbia, where he taught film, video, and animation. He is currently Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard. He has also taught Chinuk Wawa, the indigenous language of the Lower

Columbia River Basin The Columbia River drainage basin is the drainage basin of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It covers . In common usage, the term often refers to a smaller area, generally the portion of the drainage basin th ...

Awards and honors

* 2022, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant * 2021, residency fellowship, Forge Project, Taghkanic, N.Y. * 2020,

John Simon Guggenheim Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

fellowship * 2020,

MacDowell (artists' residency and workshop) MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowel ...

fellowship * 2019
Media City Film Festival's
Chrysalis Fellowship
to work on post-production o
małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore
(2020) *2018–19,

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

fellowship to work on to post-production work on a feature-length experimental film, titled ''Imał''. This film has been described as "wandering through a neomythological approach to explore an Indigenous presence of language and culture in the Pacific Northwest". * 2017, Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship, 2017 * 2016, More with Less Award,

Images Festival The Images Festival is a yearly event devoted to independent and experimental film, video art, new media and media installation that takes place each spring in Toronto. History The Images festival was founded in 1987, originally conceived as ...

*2015
Third Prize, Media City Film Festival
* 2015, Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker, Ann Arbor Film Festival

Collections

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, New York City, New York *

, New York City, New York * Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hopinka, Sky Native American artists Native American filmmakers 1984 births American video artists Living people MacDowell Colony fellows University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee alumni Ho-Chunk people 20th-century American artists 21st-century American artists American male artists Native American male artists People from Ferndale, Washington Portland State University alumni Filmmakers from Washington (state) Luiseño people 21st-century American educators 20th-century Native Americans 21st-century Native Americans 20th-century American male artists