Sky Hopinka, Fainting

Sky Hopinka explores indigenous culture, history and traditional beliefs through topics such as identity, memory, language, and myth. Belonging to the Ho-Chunk nation of Wisconsin and descendant of the Pechanga Band, from the people of the Luiseños of Southern California, Hopinka was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington (USA). U.S.). The Northwest Pacific occupies a prominent place in Hopinka’s artistic work, especially when he delves into researching concepts such as the homeland, personal identity and landscape. His films propose a reflection on the complexities of contemporary indigenous life, by fusing non-narrative cinema, poetry and abstract images with an ethnopoetic approach, a reaction against the ethnographic look that has long cosified indigenous cultures in the audiovisual format.

Ethnopoetic cinema analyzes issues of cultural identity, displacement and daily experience through a combination of documentary and experimental film techniques, thus highlighting the artistic and performative aspects of cultural expression. A deep commitment to the story from its indigenous perspective, a long-standing narrative relegated in the Western canon, is key in Hopinka’s work. As the artist explains, “My desire to make films responded in part to the need to tell indigenous stories that were typical of my community and my identity.”

In Fainting (2018), Hopinka explores the history of the creation of the Xąwįska or Indian pipe plant, also known as "ghost flower" or "corpse plant". The Ho-Chunk people have traditionally used this medicinal plant to revive those who fainted; it is also emblematic of indigenous identity, knowledge and cultures. Moreover, their symbolism can be related to the cycles of life and death, and to the spiritual world. Despite his extensive research, Hopinka failed to find a myth concerning this plant that would determine its origins, so he himself devised one, thus contributing to the practice of creating and preserving myths of his own indigenous culture.

This three-channel short film begins with a handwritten poem that is sailing scenes of a colorful expanding landscape, accompanied by evocative music. The poem, which is also labeled, speaks directly to the Xąwįska, which later appears personified as a figure wrapped in a layer and takes us to travel the world of spirits in different states of consciousness. In the work, filmed in Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, Oregon and New Mexico, Hopinka generates a dream narrative by combining music, poetry, sound, color and images in a unique immersive experience, specifically adapted this time for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.