Sky Hopinka: Kicking the Clouds

April 11 - December 6, 2026

Contemporary artist Sky Hopinka (enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians of Southern California) creates work that encompasses moving images, sound, poetry, written text, and photography. The focused exhibition Sky Hopinka: Kicking the Clouds examines the powerful ties between language and landscape at the center of his practice. His experimental approach layers words and images across media to expand conversations around what it means to be Native in the United States today.   

The exhibition takes its title from Kicking the Clouds (2021), a captivating 15-minute film inspired by a rare audio recording of Hopinka’s grandmother learning the Pechanga language from her mother, the artist’s great-grandmother. Hopinka explores his family history within the context of the loss and revival of Native languages. Excerpts from the audiotape and from a more recent interview with his mother play over 16mm film footage taken in Whatcom County, Washington. Hopinka manipulates the color, sound, and speed of footage of social gatherings and landscapes while challenging the tradition of documentary filmmaking by overlaying subtitles and voiceovers that shift between English and Indigenous languages.  

Hopinka’s photographs in Kicking the Clouds move between shared history and personal memory, from landscapes of historic sites to quieter views of daily life. The artist intersects the photographs with text by etching poems and recollections onto the surface of the images. Four large-scale photographs from his Sunflower Series (2022–2023) reflect on the legacy of Cahokia and Dickson Mounds—Indigenous sites in Illinois that were excavated in the 20th century. In two photographs from the series Breathings (2020), Hopinka weaves more intimate thoughts, or “breaths,” along the edges and around objects depicted within the works. 

The installation also presents one of the artist’s large-scale calligrams—words arranged to form a thematically related image. In Madison-Style Goose with Zig-Zag Wings (2018), Hopinka transforms text from an ethnographic study into the shape of a Ho-Chunk effigy mound. The striking piece underscores the importance of visual symbolism in Indigenous culture and points to the role written language has played in classifying Native lives. Together, the works on view demonstrate how Hopinka layers language—visual, written, and spoken—to present a nuanced understanding of place and the vitality of the contemporary Indigenous experience. By engaging multiple media and forms of communication, Hopinka also asks us to contemplate our own ties to home and cultural traditions.

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians), Free me from this body, my voice can carry only so far. Free me from this body, as I lay on the grass it feels heavy and I can't move. Free me from this body, the color burns brown with dark limbs so tired and missing the weightless breadth of above., 2020, inkjet print with hand-etched text, image/sheet: 43.6 x 42.4 cm (17 3/16 x 16 11/16 in.), framed: 47.5 x 46.5 x 4.7 cm (18 11/16 x 18 5/16 x 1 7/8 in.), National Gallery of Art, Gift of Funds from Sharon Percy Rockefeller and Senator John Davison Rockefeller IV, 2023.99.1

Exhibition Organization and Support: The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition is made possible through support from Daniel W. Hamilton. 

Exhibition Curator: This exhibition is curated by Andrea Nelson, associate curator of photographs, National Gallery of Art. 

Washington, D.C.