Sky Hopinka,
2018
Sky Hopinka is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation. He was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent several years in Southern California, and Portland, Oregon and is currently based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland, he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His work centers around personal positions of homeland and landscape, designs of language and facets of culture contained within, and the play between the accessibility of the known and the unknowable. He received his BA from Portland State University in Liberal Arts and his MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
His work has played at various festivals and exhibitions including ImagineNATIVE, Images Festival, Courtisane, Wavelengths, Ann Arbor Film Festival, AFI, Sundance, Antimatter, Chicago Underground Film Festival, FLEXfest, Projections, Out of Sight Seattle, the 2016 Wisconsin Triennial and the 2017 Whitney Biennial. He was awarded jury prizes at the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, the More with Less Award at the 2016 Images Festival, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 54th Ann Arbor Film Festival, 3rd Prize at the 2015 Media City Film Festival, and the New Cinema Award at the 2017 Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival.
Rodeny McMillian,
2018
Rodney McMillian (b. 1969) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. McMillian received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. He received the Contemporary Austin’s first Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize in 2016, and the resulting solo exhibition Rodney McMillian: Against a Civic Death is on view through August 26, 2018. McMillian had three solo museum exhibitions in the United States in 2016: “The Black Show,” curated by Anthony Elms at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; “Views of Main Street,” curated by Naima Keith at the Studio Museum Harlem, New York, NY; and “Landscape Paintings” curated by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson and Peter Eeley at MoMA PS.1, New York, NY. McMillian has previously had solo exhibitions at The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the Kitchen, New York, NY; and at Triple Candie, New York, NY. His work has been featured prominently in many group exhibitions including the 12th Sharjah Biennial, “The past, the present, the possible,” curated by Eungie Joo; “Ruffneck Contstructivists,” curated by Kara Walker at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; “Blues for Smoke,” curated by Bennett Simpson at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; “BLACK IS, BLACK AIN’T,” curated by Hamza Walker at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL; “Painting in Tongues,” the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; and “Uncertain States of America,” Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Oslo, Norway. McMillian is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA and Maccarone Gallery, New York, NY.
Monika Szewczyk,
2017
Monika Szewczyk organizes exhibitions, writes, edits and teaches – often in partnership with institutions of art and higher learning. Having moved to the Greek capital in January 2015 to join the curatorial team of the 14th edition of documenta, "Learning from Athens (working title)", Szewczyk continues to live in the Greek capital and currently works independently. With Marina Fokidis, founding editor of South as a State of Mind, she is now planning the continuation of this Athenian magazine beyond its recent role as journal of documenta 14. From 2012 through 2014, she shaped Visual Arts Program as Curator at the then newly opened Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago. Previously she was Head of Publications at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam (2008–2011) and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2004–2007). Throughout, she has taught at the Emily Carr University in Vancouver (2002-2007), Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2008-2012), Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2011), and the University of Chicago (2012-2014). Szewczyk has (co-) authored texts for numerous catalogues and journals such as Afterall, A Prior, F.R. David, Mousse, e-flux journal online and The Exhibitionist and edited volumes ranging from artist’s books, through monographs to readers and catalogues. She holds degrees from the University of British Columbia in International Relations (BA) and Art History (MA). Beginning with her masters thesis on Vito Acconci’s ‘home made epic’, The Red Tapes; through published texts such as ‘art of conversation’; to close collaborations with artists and institutions her work continues to draw inspiration from oral technologies and traditions.
