Cloudless Blue Egress of Summer, a two-channel video installation by the artist Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga, born 1984, Ferndale, WA), offers an immersive and elusive reckoning with histories of colonial violence and Indigenous resistance. The thirteen-minute work examines the history of the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest fort in the continental United States. Finished in 1695, the structure was known as Fort Marion when it held Native Americans captive throughout the Seminole Wars of the 19th century. In the 1870s, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Caddo Indian prisoners were transported to the fort, where prison supervisor Richard Henry Pratt developed educational techniques designed to “Americanize” his captives. The U.S. boarding school system that grew out of these experiments imposed a regime of compulsory assimilation on generations of Indigenous children, a practice of cultural genocide that intentionally divided families and deprived communities of their linguistic and cultural heritage.
When: Wednesday, September 22nd - Sunday, December 5 at 12:00 PM - 5:00 PM Central (some events end at 8:00 PM Central)
Where: Block Museum of Art, Mary and Leigh, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Open to all
Cost: Free
