Western Gallery hosts Indigenous Filmmaker Sky Hopinka Feb. 22

BELLINGHAM, WA – The Western Gallery on the campus of Western Washington University will host a talk by Indigenous filmmaker, video artist, poet, and MacArthur Foundation grantee Sky Hopinka at on Thursday, Feb. 22 at 5 p.m. in the gallery.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Hopinka will talk about his own art and share his insights on experimental Indigenous cinema, which is the subject of the Western Gallery’s current exhibition, which Hopinka curated, "What Was Always Yours and Never Lost."

Currently based in New York City, Hopinka was born and raised in Ferndale. He is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and a descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians.

Hopinka’s own visually striking and linguistically rich films, photographs, and poetry explore the layered nature of contemporary Indigenous perspectives, memory, and culture. Using different modes of documentary, personal, and non-fiction image making, Hopinka’s experimental films interweave personal and communal histories and experiences to create an alternative form of storytelling.

Hopinka’s work has been shown in major exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial and the Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His films have been screened at various film festivals, including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film Festival.

Hopinka was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2018-2019, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019, a recipient of a 2020 Alpert Award for Film/Video, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and was a 2021 Forge Project Fellow. Hopinka is an assistant professor of Film at Bard College in New York City.

For more information about the talk and the exhibition, gallery hours, directions, and parking, visit westerngallery.wwu.edu or call 360-650-2829.