lydia marie hicks is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and researcher whose work explores Black land relations, archival restoration, and speculative natural histories. With a background in zoology and an M.F.A. in film, she blends ancestral memory, scientific inquiry, and radical imagination to tell layered stories of place and possibility.
hicks is the director of Lake Idlewild (2024), the first in a series of films and installations reanimating the cultural and ecological histories of Idlewild, MI—where she has lived since 2020. In returning to Idlewild, she has taken up her great-grandmother’s role as a host along the Great Migration, extending hospitality, mutual care, and creative space to those seeking rest and connection. She is the founder of the Black Eden Arts Alliance, a nonprofit advancing public memory, land stewardship, and experimental culture. Her work is informed by decades of systems theory research and fieldwork around the world, and has been supported by residencies including the Fine Arts Work Center, Earthfire Sanctuary, and Wilsumaco Biological Station. She is currently developing a mobile museum and digital archive centering Black ecological futures.
