{"id":1856490,"date":"2026-03-30T18:35:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1856490"},"modified":"2026-03-30T18:35:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:35:06","slug":"sky-hopinka-reframes-the-american-landscape-at-the-barnes-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1856490","title":{"rendered":"Sky Hopinka Reframes the American Landscape at the Barnes Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Barnes_SkyHopinka_3.jpeg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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Editor\u2019s Note:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0This story is part of\u00a0<\/em>Newsmakers<\/em><\/strong>, an\u00a0<\/em>ARTnews\u00a0series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tSky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation\/Pechanga Band of\u00a0Luise\u00f1o Indians) has spent the last year and a half photographing the American landscape. That journey across the United States has culminated in the new site-specific installation, titled Red Metal Dust<\/em>, at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. For it, the multidisciplinary Native American artist constructed 11 panels that layer landscape photography and copper sheets and filter American histories and landscapes from an Indigenous perspective.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese meditative photographic landscapes reference the Ho-Chunk tribe\u2019s name for copper, a surface metal that takes on the effects of its surroundings and wear-and-tear through physical contact. On view through next January, Red Metal Dust<\/em> asks viewers to consider the cycles of time\u2014past, present, future\u2014via copper itself. ARTnews<\/em>\u00a0spoke with Hopinka to discuss the impacts of time and human presence on the American landscape in this new body of works.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and concision.<\/em><\/p>\n

ARTnews: How did you conceive of Red Metal Dust<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sky Hopinka: <\/strong>I\u2019ve been thinking about working with copper and building on my photo-making practice in a few different ways. Over the last six or seven years, I\u2019ve done some etching on top of the photographic surface. I\u2019m always thinking about ways to disrupt the photographic image. Copper is a material I\u2019ve always found beautiful, and it has a lot of cultural significance\u2014not only for my tribe, but tribes across the continents. This installation became a way to combine these disparate elements that I\u2019ve been thinking about formally, while also continuing to take photographs and use a few different interventions that I\u2019ve been creating with transparencies, for instance, in previous works.<\/p>\n

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Sky Hopinka, Red Metal Dust<\/em>, 2026, installation view, at Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.<\/span>Courtesy Barnes Foundation<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

You mentioned your tribe\u2019s and others\u2019 relationship to copper. I know the name of the installation derives from the Ho-Chunk name for the metal. Can you talk about that connection?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThere are different uses, meanings, and material objects made from copper, as well as in our stories, which describe copper as the third descendant of another stone. There\u2019s something about that that is really touching, in terms of how to look at these landscapes and the people within the image, how to think about myself making them, and how to think about people looking at these works. The Ho-Chunk word [for copper] m\u0105\u0105s\u0161uc <\/em>means \u201cred metal.\u201d The last part of the title \u201cdust\u201d comes from this idea in stories about the ways that people come from dust.<\/p>\n

Which American landscapes and people did you choose to photograph?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThey\u2019re all from the last year and a half. It ranges from shooting out of the window from a cross-country Amtrak train ride to aerial photos taken while flying over the US. I photographed Arizona and Washington states, specifically the coast where I\u2019m from and where I like to photograph a lot, as well as Tulsa and Tahlequah, Oklahoma. These are places that I\u2019ve been traversing or that I\u2019ve been shooting other projects.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not meant to be a coast-to-coast survey of North America or the US, but these are places that are important to me that I\u2019ve passed through. Thinking about that mixed with the diasporic nature of Native peoples\u2014at times it feels like we\u2019re dust, but there\u2019s something substantial to that presence, no matter how spread out or how far away from our homelands we are. That felt like an encouraging reason to work with the material, along with the ways that copper is also seen as a living thing in our stories. In the work, there\u2019s this idea of it being alive from creation to where we\u2019re at right now.<\/p>\n

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Artist Sky Hopinka recently opened a new installation at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. <\/span>Courtesy Sky Hopinka<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As a surface metal, copper shows the effects of its environment and wear through physical contact. Tell me about that material pairing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI spent the last few days polishing and cleaning every copper surface, knowing that it\u2019s going to oxidize, it\u2019s going to breathe, it\u2019s going to reflect the living environments, and I think that\u2019s really beautiful.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs people pass through this space, their breath, their presence, and things that they give off are going to affect the coloration of this material, and then it will be like a reflection of all who passed through the space in this moment of time. That\u2019s life in so many ways, metaphorically and physically. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to [change] in the next year or in the next 10 months of the show, but I\u2019m looking forward to seeing how the copper responds. It\u2019s this small little gesture to the reflections of the living that reminds us of where we\u2019ve been and also where we\u2019re going.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very intimate collaboration installation between yourself, the viewer, and the element of time. You mentioned a return to some techniques you previously used.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYes, all of the photographs are shot on film\u2014some are medium format and others are 35-millimeter. In some ways, the works function like a bit of a diary, but the overlays of the transparencies on top of the images further gesture to a series of works called \u201cThe Land Describes Itself\u201d [2019]. It\u2019s nice to revisit that technique of printing photos on transparency papers and putting them on another projector and then overlay those on top of the photographic landscapes in different configurations. It\u2019s a convoluted process, but it\u2019s another intervention to affect the landscape in a way that speaks to my memory of it.<\/p>\n

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Sky Hopinka, Red Metal Dust<\/em>, 2026, installation view, at Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.<\/span>Courtesy Barnes Foundation<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Untitled 11<\/em><\/strong> is one example that includes people walking away with their backs to the camera.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s this trope of the Indian walking away into the sunset and handing out the lands peacefully to the white settlers. This is my way of playing with that trope a bit. The photo itself was shot on a reservation. And then the copper is that intervention that is about framing life and presence.<\/p>\n

I know that the copper holds tribal significance, and it has also been heavily used in the US to mint the now-defunct penny and create the Statue of Liberty, for instance. Were you thinking about those connections?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI thought about that, but it\u2019s also a metal with thousands of years of history and use by Native peoples. Of course, the American lands are always going to be looked at, especially in Indigenous work because that\u2019s the way that we are framed. I\u2019ve always been interested in trying to ignore that. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m making work in response to the 250th anniversary of the US or pennies or the Statue of Liberty or copper roofs.<\/p>\n

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Sky Hopinka, Red Metal Dust<\/em>, 2026, installation view, at Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.<\/span>Courtesy Barnes Foundation<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Philadelphia is known as the birthplace of the US. Does it mean anything to show this work here during the anniversary of the country\u2019s founding?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt doesn\u2019t. There\u2019s 250 years of history to unpack, but then there\u2019s also the years before that with the relationship to the tribes and to this place. It\u2019s hard to distill what it means to be here. There\u2019s also the history of the Barnes and the collector himself. History is a way to abstract a line and a lineage and a continuation of presence that reminds you of the actual <\/em>lineage and the actual <\/em>continuation of people as human beings, and where we sit on that continuum. And that\u2019s how I think about it. There\u2019s a long history of Native people coming to the city and living in this country, and a country moving and claiming Native lands, but then here we are today. It\u2019s important to relate to that history and remember that history, and what happens next is also important. I am existing right here, right now, in this year, on this day. But then what happens in the next year? There\u2019s this idea, too, of life coming from dust and, so then, what\u2019s the next life going to be like?<\/p>\n

What do you hope people will take away from the installation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know because these works don\u2019t exist in a vacuum. They exist in conversation with many other things. I have the reasons why and how I made these, but whoever is going to come here, they\u2019re not just going to be American, they\u2019re not just going to be white, they\u2019re going to be from all kinds of backgrounds. The interpretations, the stories, and the experiences people bring is part of how the work lives and exists. That\u2019s what makes art living.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Barnes_SkyHopinka_3.jpeg?w=1024″] Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This story is part of\u00a0Newsmakers, an\u00a0ARTnews\u00a0series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world. Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation\/Pechanga Band of\u00a0Luise\u00f1o Indians) has spent the last year and a half photographing the American landscape. That journey across the United States has culminated in the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1856490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1856490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1856490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1856490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1856490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1856490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}