He Who Wears Faces on His Ears
Total run time: 8:46
HD video, stereo, color
2025
The piece continues Hopinka’s exploration of Indigenous mythologies, reflecting on how they resonate within contemporary geographies and permeate everyday life as an invisible, reverberating presence. Both the exhibition and the video’s titles reference the Ho-Chunk myth of Red Horn, a spiritual figure also known as He Who Wears Human Faces as Earrings. Red Horn moves between the human and the mythic, sent by the Earthmaker, ultimately dying and being revived. The narrative’s cyclical journey between worlds mirrors Hopinka’s own approach to language, myth, and cultural memory.
The video opens with an expansive, seemingly endless view of a cloudscape from above. Against this backdrop, a calligram composed of passages from Yves Bonnefoy’s book The Arrière-Pays unfolds. Calligrams are a central element of Hopinka’s practice; typically presented as static images in exhibition spaces, here they appear as pictures within a moving picture.
Following a series of abstract, atmospheric sequences, the viewer is guided down a single-lane, treelined country road. From the bottom right of the screen, text spirals upward, gradually covering the image before dissolving and vanishing. Throughout, overlapping scenes unfold in the background, a shifting collage of the same country road and newly introduced urban street scenes, rotated 180 degrees. These layered places are further distorted by the manipulation of color. The final text, increasingly difficult to read, contains lines from a poem by the artist. In it, he reflects on the myriad voices and perspectives that shape our understanding of the world. The poem speaks of invisible ghosts, the importance of music, and voices that return to us, telling stories from the past.
Music by Thad Kellstadt
Additional Music by Wisconsin Dells Singers