Sky Hopinka’s visually striking and linguistically rich films, photographs, and poetry, explore the layered nature of contemporary Indigenous experience. A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Hopinka’s personal work teases out legacies of both colonial oppression and Native resistance, illuminating continuities between past and present, the known and unknowable. Sky Hopinka will present a new film by Hopinka. Organized by Lauren Schell Dickens, Rachel Nelson, and Gina Dent as part of Visualizing Abolition, an art initiative of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz and San José Museum of Art.

The multi-sited exhibition opens February 5 at the new Institute of the Arts and Sciences galleries, located in the city of Santa Cruz and will be on view through March 26.

Visualizing Abolition

Visualizing Abolition is an ongoing initiative exploring art, prisons, and justice, with exhibitions collaboratively organized by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz and San José Museum of Art.

Letters from the Inside

Since 2019, a letter writing campaign has facilitated correspondence between Museum visitors and our incarcerated neighbors. The campaign—which has included letters mailed directly to Museum members—has expanded into an onsite letter-writing station. Learn more about the project on this webpage.

Support

Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen is supported by the SJMA Exhibitions Fund, with generous contributions from the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

Operations and programs at the San José Museum of Art are made possible by generous support from SJMA’s Board of Trustees, a Cultural Affairs Grant from the City of San José, the Lipman Family Foundation, the Adobe Foundation, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, Sally Lucas, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Yellow Chair Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese, the SJMA Director's Council and Council of 100, the San José Museum of Art Endowment Fund established by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.

Press

Fall Art Line-up 2022, Metro Silicon Valley
August 24, 2022

Sky Hopinka’s New Film at San Jose Museum of Art, Metro Silicon Valley
November 30, 2022

Museum Highlights | A Point Stretched: Views on Time and Sky Hopinka: Seeing and Seen, SF/ARTS
December 1, 2022

On Sunflower Siege, The Rhizome | When the Leaves Fall Magazine
December 19, 2022

Sky Hopinka Is Tired of Explaining Everything to Non-Natives, Hyperallergic
February 6, 2023