Sky Hopinka. Fainting Spells

OPENING TALK

September 2025

Sky Hopinka. Fainting Spells 09.18.2025 - 01.18.2026 Sky Hopinka explores Indigenous culture, history, and traditional beliefs through themes of identity, memory, language, and myth. A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and a descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño people of Southern California, Hopinka was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington, in the United States. The Pacific Northwest holds a special place in Hopinka’s artwork, especially as he delves into investigating notions of homeland, personhood, and landscape. In particular, his films reflect on the complexities of contemporary Indigenous life by blending non-narrative filmmaking, poetry, and abstract imagery with an ethnopoetic approach—a response against the ethnographic gaze that has long objectified Indigenous cultures in moving image. Ethnopoetic cinema examines themes of cultural identity, displacement, and the everyday experience through a combination of documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques, thereby emphasizing the artistic and performative aspects of cultural expression. At the core of Hopinka’s work is a profound commitment to storytelling through his Indigenous perspective, a narrative that has long been marginalized within the Western canon. He explains, “Part of the desire I had to make films was to tell Indigenous stories that were unique to my own community and my own identity.” In Fainting Spells (2018), Hopinka explores the creation story of Xąwįska, or Indian Pipe Plant, also known as ghost flower or corpse plant. This medicinal flowering plant is traditionally used by the Ho-Chunk people to revive those who have fainted and is also emblematic of Indigenous identity, knowledge, and culture. Moreover, its symbolism can be linked to cycles of life and death, or a connection to the spiritual world. Although Hopinka could not unearth a myth for the plant to determine its origins through his extensive research, he instead created one to engage with and reclaim the practice of mythkeepers and mythmaking in his own Indigenous culture. The three-channel short film begins with a handwritten poem that moves across scenes of expansive colorful landscape accompanied by lyrical music. The poem, which is also listed below, speaks to Xąwįska directly, who later appears personified as a cloaked figure, and leads viewers on a walk through the spirit world in different states of consciousness. Filmed in Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, Oregon, and New Mexico, Hopinka creates a dreamlike visual narrative by collaging together music, poetry, sound, color, and imagery into a unique immersive experience in this new edition created specifically for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Curator: Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães