Sky Hopinka (b. 1984; lives and works in New York) is a multidisciplinary artist working in video, photography, text, and installation. A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Hopinka examines the poetic relationship between place, memory, and Indigenous sovereignty. Hopinka’s lyrical video Sunflower Siege Engine (2022) layers archival footage of the 1969 Alcatraz occupation by Native activists with vivid scenes of the Pacific redwoods and Cahokia Mounds, a historical site in present-day Illinois.
The work features footage of Mohawk activist Richard Oakes (1942–1972) reading the defiant “Proclamation: To the Great White Father and All His People” at the Alcatraz occupation—a reclamation of Native land and a defining moment in the rise of the American Indian Movement. The camera zooms out to reveal that this recording is playing on a laptop in Hopinka’s studio, blurring personal narrative with historical memory. In this scene, Hopinka interweaves his own voice with Oakes’s proclamation, creating a dialogue across time that reenvisions the notorious prison as a symbol of liberation.
A new addition to BAMPFA’s collection, Sunflower Siege Engine reflects a lineage of Indigenous resistance connected to the Bay Area today. Through vivid cinematography, the grain of archival footage, and a layered soundscape, the film offers a meditation on resilience and belonging. Hopinka reminds us that the land and its histories hold both wounds and wisdom. In the artist’s words, “Being decentered from a land and a home burdens many of us. . . . It’s hard to parse out the pain of the elders and pain that’s your own. . . . Intergenerational suffering becomes a transgenerational reckoning.”
