Join the University of Arkansas School of Art for a visiting lecture with renowned artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka, recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant.” Hopinka will share insights into his creative process, spanning film, photography, and text-based works, and reflect on how his personal experiences inform his documentary forms of media.
Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work explores Indigenous homeland, language, and landscape. His films have been featured at major festivals including Sundance and the New York Film Festival, and his exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial and LUMA Arles. He is currently Assistant Professor of Film at Harvard University.
This event is free and open to the public.
More about Sky Hopinka
Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in
Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside,
California, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught
chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo,
and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape,
designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and
non fiction forms of media.
Hopinka’s films have played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International
Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Courtisane Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film
Festival. His work was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial and
Prospect.5 in 2021. He wxas a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and participated
in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He has had a solo exhibition at the Center for
Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. Hopinka is
the recipient of the Infinity Award in Art from the International Center and the Alpert Award
for Film/Video and fellowships including The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at
Harvard University, Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Art Matters, The Guggenheim Foundation,
and The Forge Project. In the fall of 2022, he received a MacArthur Fellowship for his work
as a visual artist and filmmaker. Hopinka is currently an Assistant Professor of Film at
Harvard University.