darylina powderface Exhibits 'how it used to be' at the ICA

Visual Arts student darylina powderface is currently exhibiting her short film, how it used to be, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA).

how it used to be premiered at the Class of 2026 First Year MFA Exhibition last Spring, and was presented at Barnard College's Movement Lab following powderface's tenure as Student-Artist-in-Residence. Now, the experimental film takes on new resonances in Intaglios of Breath and Light, a selection of short films by Native North American contemporary artists curated by filmmaker and visual artist Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians). 

For powderface, memory lives in the land, the water, and the body. Centered on this concept of "blood memory," how it used to be weaves archival and new visuals with sound to create what powderface calls "a living act of remembrance." Past, present, and future commingle in layers of story, song, and movement. 

In dialogue with Hopinka's curation, powderface expressed that her experimental film "extends the exhibition's nonlinear pathways of memory—those inscribed in land, water, story, and body—creating a space of relation and resonance among distinct yet interconnected Indigenous worldviews."

Intaglios of Breath and Light was organized to accompany An Indigenous Present, a nationally touring exhibition spanning 100 years of contemporary Indigenous art. Bringing together new commissions and significant works by 15 artists, the exhibition is a celebration of diverse approaches to concept, form, and medium. Debuting at the ICA, An Indigenous Present is on view October 9, 2025–March 8, 2026, before traveling to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle later in 2026.

"These are fleeting works, grounded in the land and in the ways these artists move through it," Hopinka said. "Together, these films carve their own marks on the landscape, blurring the boundaries of when and where they belong, and revealing the porous line between presence and absence, between what endures and what drifts away."

darylina powderface is a multidisciplinary artist and storyteller from the Stoney Nakoda and Siksika Nation. Spanning theater, film, photography, and movement, her work investigates spatial and temporal realities through an Indigenous lens. Weaving narratives that transcend western narratives of storytelling, powderface uses her art to embody memory, knowledge, and lived experience.

powderface's process is community-driven: she has collaborated with Vancouver-based arts organizations such as Savage Society, Leaky Heaven Performance, and 2 Rivers Remix Society. Her podcast Aiysiniiksin: Keeping the Tradition Alive (2021) shares traditional and contemporary Indigenous stories through conversations with artists, scholars, and relatives. Her four-part docuseries on Indigenous food sovereignty, a way forward, created in partnership with Full Circle: First Nations Performance, is coming soon. Her work has been recognized with a scholarship from the First Peoples' Cultural Council in British Columbia. 

"'how it used to be' is an offering, a tribute to all who shaped me; my teachers, my mentors, my grandmothers and grandfathers, my mother and father, aunts and uncles—those who walk beside me still, and those who have crossed into the spirit world," powderface told Savage Society, a collective of Indigenous film and theatre artists, of which she is Artistic Associate.

Intaglios of Breath and Light is on view October 13, 2025–February 5, 2026 at the ICA in Boston, Massachusetts.