ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY, September 2020 -The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) will present Sky Hopinka: Centers of Somewhere opening October 17, 2020, a focused look at key ideas, preoccupations, and methods in the work of artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka (born 1984 in Ferndale, Washington). In order to limit capacity in the museum guests must register in advance - see below for details on how to visit.
A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Hopinka has become recognized for video work that centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and that explores language as a container of culture. Within the trajectory of experimental cinema, Hopinka contributes to the development of Indigenous aesthetics, insisting on a profoundly subjective position that destabilizes entrenched colonial perspectives and related descriptions of land, sky, sea, myth, place, and personhood. Significant to his work is the study and teaching of the near extinct Indigenous language chinuk wawa. His films are sometimes subtitled in English and chinuk wawa or the language Hočąk, and move between concepts in each linguistic system to subvert and question them.
Centers of Somewhere will present a newly commissioned, multi-channel work Here you are before the trees (2020), alongside a selection of recent videos and photography. The newly commissioned work will explore Indigenous histories of the Hudson Valley as they are connected to other regions in the U.S. Each channel of the new installation will focus on a different aspect of these landscapes, including the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians who were relocated from the Hudson Valley region to Wisconsin near Hopinka’s tribal homeland. The installation also incorporates research on Henry Roe Cloud, a Ho-Chunk tribal member from Wisconsin who was a contributor to the Merriam Report of 1928 as well as the prolific and influential writer Vine Deloria Jr. and his father, Vine Deloria Sr. who was a graduate of St. Stephen’s College, Bard’s first incarnation. Centers of Somewhere will also present a new series of sixteen photographs entitled Breathings (2020) that were shot throughout the U.S. in 2020. While the photographs within the Breathings series range in locations and subject matter, a text binds them, with its handwritten lines encircling the borders of each image. For instance, a line around a cold Chicago intersection devoid of people reads: “I think of my home tonight. I don’t have any resolutions, but I’ve felt so much through these streets, these neighborhoods. This land and this Land hold so much, and this pain and this Pain call for salves we already have, still needing to be wrapped and poulticed.”
Centers of Somewhere also includes several short video works by Hopinka including Dislocation Blues (2017), an experimental documentary of the Standing Rock protests, offering what the artist calls an “incomplete and imperfect portrait of reflections” around the historic event and its potential; Jáaji Approx (2015), which layers recordings of Hopinka’s father over landscapes that the two (father and son) have separately traveled; and, I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become (2016), an elegy to poet Diane Burns (Chemehuevi/ Anishinabe) that meditates on mortality, afterlife and reincarnation.
Sky Hopinka: Centers of Somewhere is curated by Lauren Cornell, Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator, CCS Bard. A series of on-line public programs for Centers of Somewhere will be organized by Cornell and Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch, Associate Professor of History, Bard College. The first virtual event will take place on October 19th at 5 p.m. In this special presentation, Heather Bruegl, Director of Cultural Affairs for the Stockbridge Munsee Community, will provide an overview of local history with an aim to restore Indigenous presence at Bard College. This activation, issued from the community’s current home in Wisconsin, acknowledges the continuing Mohican and Munsee relationship to their homelands. Registration for this virtual event and others (to be announced) will be available on the CCS Bard website (https://ccs.bard.edu/).
Alongside Centers of Somewhere, CCS Bard will co-publish Perfidia a book of Hopinka’s writings with Wendy’s Subway, a non-profit reading room, writing space, and independent publisher located in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The book will also feature an essay by Julie Niemi, independent curator and CCS Bard Alum 2017.
Exhibitions at CCS Bard are made possible with support from the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, the CCS Bard Arts Council, and the Center’s Patrons, Supporters, and Friends.
Major support for Centers of Somewhere is provided by Lonti Ebers.
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How To Visit
The CCS Bard Galleries are open Thursday through Sunday from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is by advance reservation only - reserve and confirm your timed tickets here. We have instituted new attendance protocols to ensure the health and safety of our patrons, community, and staff. To read more about all the safety precautions we have in place and to prepare for your museum visit, please read more here. Reserved tickets are free to the public. We cannot admit walk-up visitors, so please confirm your reservation before visiting.
Access Policy for Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard Galleries
CCS Bard and the Hessel Museum are located in a single-level facility. Parking is available outside of the building in an ADA-compliant parking lot which has four accessible parking spaces at the end of the paved entrance way. If you have specific questions or requests about access, please write to ccs@bard.edu at least two weeks before your visit or the event you plan to attend and we will make every effort to accommodate you. During your visit, you may seek the assistance of Security and Visitor Service staff members who are present at the CCS Bard reception desk and throughout the exhibitions. Please don’t hesitate to contact ccs@bard.edu with feedback about your visit. To read our full access policy, please see our website here.