Video Still. Image Courtesy of the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, www.vdb.org.
Sky Hopinka: Kunįkaga Remembers Red Banks, Kunįkaga Remembers the Welcome Song
Sky Hopinka, born in 1984, is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Pechanga Band of Luiseno. He is a visual artist who uses film, video, photography, and text to explore concepts around landscape, presence and absence, history, Indigenous culture, and Indigenous language. In 2022, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Grant for his work as an artist and filmmaker.
Many of his films consider concepts of homeland and what it means to be a guest within a designated space. In Kunįkaga Remember Red Banks, Kunįkaga Remembers the Welcoming Song (2014), Hopinka examines alternative historical memories of the location of Red Banks near present day Green Bay, Wisconsin. Once a Ho-Chunk Village, the site is also known as the first European landing by Jean Nicolet in 1634. In this film, Hopinka combines images, text, and conversations with his grandmother to reflect on representations of personal and shared histories, as well as practices and processes of remembrance.
Organized by Donna Gustafson, Chief Curator, and Raven Manygoats, Graduate Curatorial Assistant
Funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund.
Exhibition Preview
In the film Kunįkaga Remember Red Banks, Kunįkaga Remembers the Welcoming Song (2014), Sky Hopinka examines alternative historical memories of the location of Red Banks near present day Green Bay, Wisconsin.
