Sky Hopinka
Curated by Gina Basso
January 10 through April 18, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10 | 5 to 8pm
Press Release
![](https://www.slashart.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/LORE_01.jpg "Still from "Lore", 2019, 16mm color film loop with sound")
“I make work for an Indigenous audience. You can watch if you’re not part of these communities. But just know that I’m not going to be doing a lot of explaining. And I don’t think it’s a lot to ask a non-Indigenous audience to try and keep up a little bit, or to try and ask questions later on, or to just stop and listen.”
– Sky Hopinka
Sky Hopinka’s (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) cinematography gives the feeling of floating, as if led by an unseen presence through spaces permeated by sounds and echoes—rhythmic, vocal, choral, musical. This momentary look through Hopinka’s viewfinder is not a chance to walk in his footsteps or step into his experiences, but to be in observance, with ears attuned to his frequency. We are guided through powwows, down forest paths, through stretches of lonely highways, and towards the land’s end. Each scene unfolds in a collage of moving images and sounds as if tuning a radio that vacillates between the diegetic and the external. We feel a sense of immersion and of being there, or having been there, even if in a dream (or hallucination). But remember: we’re just passengers.
Read Gina Basso’s full curatorial statement here.