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The Green Gallery

Milwaukee

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. 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.

Teją́. The Sea. It's neither our name for the great lakes or lesser lakes. It's the sea, and we said we were from the north and from the salt. It's too much right now. Too much like learning that my father performed the Breathings his entire life. I have recordings of him, and I heard them when I was little, and I said them myself after his death.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

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.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.18 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

The clouds are too dull this time of year. It's late June and I'm full of anger and hate. They think we're trash, they think we're as useless as our garbage buried in their fields turned up under plow, exposed in heavy rain. It makes me angry to think about that. To feel like that. Under plow and over plowed and plowed over by machines dredging and weeding through the hills and the fields and my family and my home.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

The thunders have returned. From the north they came south as I was sitting outside on a porch visiting and laughing with an old friend who always tells me "welcome home" every time I come around. They say that this time of year, the thunders have returned. k'oiregišana.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

The mountains are growing and you're over there looking at me like that. These Breathings are begging's, these Breathings are asking for anything having to do with direction. Wrapped in blankets made of clouds, Morning Star got up and pointed the way. We were too tired and too weak to proceed, but still the gesture is still in the east at a certain time of year.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

I’ve been here and I’ve been there, and like words proclaiming an invocation, these photographs are their own exhalations, their own breathings, their own exaltations to the minute Heroka who bless and raze and give direction to matters concerning life and death. These landscapes are squared away and bordered off by breaths etched on their surface outlining pleas for quiet and respite, and bearings to help traverse weary landscapes of wayward histories.

O! Being here right now, not thinking of yesterday or the day before. But a long time ago last night aunty mentioned today and the rain falling and streaking against the upstairs window as Stacey and I looked down at the birch waiting to be climbed. This isn't the outside, and being here then felt more comfortable, in slicks and hoods, in boots and in our youth.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

Here and after, never knowing what came before or comes next, they sit and watch the ocean thinking of the sand and what's buried underneath. I heard a long time ago that there's a village somewhere near here. Under the sand, overgrown by trees, restless and quiet.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

They don't care about us and laugh when we turn on each other. I promised myself, no memories, no similes, still, I am deeply troubled at heart.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

The foothold held fast as our toes ached and the salty water sloughed away skin and left bone to be ground to dust and sand. There's only rocks and seagulls here though, steadfast against the sound of water trickling over and again with each push and pull of the tide, or some kind of wake.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

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.

Sky Hopinka
2020
Inkjet print, etching
43.1 x 43.1 cm / 17 x 17 in
43.9 x 44.4 cm / 17 5/16 x 17 1/2 in (framed)
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
$ 4,000

The Green Gallery

The Green Gallery was established in 2004 by artist John Riepenhoff as a conceptual art project space and in 2009, with Jake Palmert, evolved to include a commercial art gallery. It serves the Midwestern contemporary art community where it is based and actively collaborates with artists, galleries, institutions and collections internationally.

Contact The Green Gallery / John Riepenhoff   +1 414 640 2595