Acclaimed Artist Sky Hopinka Curates Native Film Series at the BMA

Don’t wait for me, just tell me where you’re going foregrounds Native voices in experimental filmmaking 

BALTIMORE, MD (April 8, 2024)— On May 12, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) opens Don’t wait for me, just tell me where you’re going, a series of short experimental films by Native artists selected by guest curator Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation and descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians). Hopinka is a widely acclaimed artist and a founding member of COUSIN, a collective supporting Indigenous artists expanding the form of film. The five films are presented in a continuous loop in the BMA’s Black Box gallery through December 1, 2024.

Of the series, Hopinka said, “In the questions they ask and in the wandering they do, the short films in this gallery uncover and explore generational memory. They give thanks to those who are gone, those who are yet to be born, and those who are here living right now. They acknowledge that blood is a gift and the land is a gift and our past is a gift. They drift through time, movement, memorial, and landscape towards some unknown and never-known place and serve as a much-needed reminder that we’ll all get there together, just not at the same time.”

Descriptions of each film follow:

✧Ⓑ☻Ⓛ♡Ⓞ✇☟Ⓞ☽Ⓓ✰ ⓜⓐⓣⓔⓡⓘⓐⓛⓢ✦ (pronounced Blood Materials)

(2021) by Fox Maxy (Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians and Payómkawichum) (born San Diego 1992) consists of meticulously edited moving images gathered from the artist’s personal archive set to a soundscape of remixed ambient noises and songs ranging from hip hop to country. The film traverses fragmented landscapes and events in the present to pose questions about the fluidity and warping of identity, land, nature, and time.

seeing her (2020) by Lindsay McIntyre (Inuk) (born Treaty Six territory, Edmonton, Canada 1977) This 3:30 minute single-channel silent video invites a witnessing of the labor, skill, and familial record held within beadwork passed down from mother to daughter through generations. Shot on hand-processed Super 16 film, the beaded textures featured in this film are attached to the front panel of McIntyre’s great-grandmother’s amauti, or parka.

We Only Answer Our Landline (2019) by Olivia Camfield (Muscogee Creek Nation) (born Fredericksburg, TX 1997) and Woodrow Hunt (Cherokee, Klamath, and Modoc Tribes descendent) (born Portland, OR 1997) is a 5:50-minute single-channel video performed by Kayla Banks (Mississippi Choctaw Descendent, African American, Eastern European), Raven Bright (Navajo Nation), Celeste Camfield (Muscogee Creek Nation), Hotvlkuce Harjo (Muscogee Creek Nation), Victoria Perez (mixed Indígena, Mexican, Czech), and Anne Pesata (Jicarilla Apache), with music by Black Belt Eagle Scout, “Indians Never Die.” We Only Answer Our Landline searches through snapshots from family albums, archival images and registries, and contemporary and vintage footage to explore notions of the alien.

Cerro Saturno (2022) by Miguel Hilari (Aymara/German) (born Hamburg, Germany 1985) is a 13:18-minute single-channel video that reveals traces of human presence—such as a lone dirt road or transmission tower—within the moonlit landscapes of the Bolivian mountains. Cerro Saturno follows these clues of existence to the populous city La Paz, where the artist is based, and its sonic buzz of activity, where faces are captured with the same attention and poetry as the environment in which they live.

all-around junior male (2012) by Lindsay McIntyre (Inuk) (born Treaty Six territory, Edmonton, Canada 1977) is a 7:30-minute single-channel video that shows a young Nunamiut athlete, Sean Uquqtuq, performing a challenging traditional Inuit game known as the one-foot high kick. Shot on hand-processed 16mm film, this textured, abstracted portrait shows reverence and respect to a challenging athletic display in an equally demanding subarctic tundra landscape.

The exhibition is part of the BMA’s Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum initiative that significantly increases the presence of Native voices, experiences, and works across the museum. Unfolding over the course of 10 months, Preoccupied includes nine solo and thematic exhibitions, interpretative interventions across the museum’s collection galleries, the development of a publication guided by Native methodologies, and public programs. It represents an exceptionally expansive museum presentation of Native artists and thinkers, with nearly 100 individuals contributing to and represented across the initiative.

About Sky Hopinka

About the Baltimore Museum of Art

Founded in 1914, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) inspires people of all ages and backgrounds through exhibitions, programs, and collections that tell an expansive story of art—challenging long-held narratives and embracing new voices. Our outstanding collection of more than 97,000 objects spans many eras and cultures and includes the world’s largest public holding of works by Henri Matisse; one of the nation’s finest collections of prints, drawings, and photographs; and a rapidly growing number of works by contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds. The museum is also distinguished by a neoclassical building designed by American architect John Russell Pope and two beautifully landscaped gardens featuring an array of modern and contemporary sculpture. The BMA is located three miles north of the Inner Harbor, adjacent to the main campus of Johns Hopkins University, and has a community branch at Lexington Market. General admission is free so that everyone can enjoy the power of art.