Sky Hopinka

Sky Hopinka studied at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Portland State University. Work by Sky Hopinka is recorded in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Hessel Museum of Art, Forge Project and Gochman Family Collection. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellows Program.

• Name — Sky Hopinka • Born — 1984 • Birthplace — Ferndale, Washington, US • Citizenship — Ho-Chunk Nation; American • Education — Portland State University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee • Known for — Video art, film, animation • Style — Experimental • Awards — Guggenheim Fellowship (2020) MacArthur Fellowship (2022) • Website — http: www.skyhopinka.com

Hopinka was born in Ferndale, Washington, and moved to Southern California as a teenager. Hopinka's undergraduate education was at Portland State University (PSU), where he became interested in documentary film. He received a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts. While at PSU, he started to take interest in Indigenous language revitalization. In 2013, Hopinka moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the homeland of the Ho-Chunk Nation, and enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in film, video, and new genres.

Hopinka's work deals with personal interpretations of homeland and landscape; the correlation between language and culture in relation to home and land. Hopinka has said: "Deconstructing language [through cinema] is 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 at Media City Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Sundance Film Festival, ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival, 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 Whitney Biennial.