Everything to be obliterated, 2023

Inkjet with hand-scratched text and UV laminate, framed
40 × 40 in.

In Everything to be obliterated, a dense expanse of clouds fills the frame, their shifting grays carrying both weight and motion. Across this unsettled sky, Hopinka inscribes fragments of text: “Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain, wash away everything again. On the road and on the street with so many things at our feet.” The words arc like a horizon, where image and language commingle. Light filters through in muted flashes, holding a tension between erasure and persistence. The photograph becomes a space where memory, poetry, and atmosphere converge.

etched text
Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain, wash away everything again. On the road and on the street with so many things at our feet.

In the Sunflower series, Sky Hopinka brings together expansive skies, roads, and horizons with etched fragments of text, creating photographs where image and language intertwine. Clouds shift from shadow to brilliance, highways extend toward vanishing points, and twilight landscapes hold both the weight of memory and the promise of renewal. Across these scenes, Hopinka inscribes words of reflection, longing, and kinship—gestures that transform atmosphere into a space of storytelling. Rooted in Indigenous landscapes, histories, and writings, the series situates travel and weather as more than backdrop; they emerge as active participants in a geography shaped by memory, poetry, and presence.