Bending Time, Reanimating Memory: The Work of Lydia Marie Hicks

Lydia Marie Hicks is a quantum-disciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, film, installation, archival research, ecology, and community-based work. She seeks to resurrect and reanimate Black histories—particularly those rooted in family lineage, land, and migration—treating history not as a static record but as a living, responsive force. Hicks approaches Black memory as embedded in ecosystems, labor, built environments, and oral traditions, blending rigorous research with imaginative storytelling, collaborative practice, and ritualized labor.

Central to Hicks’s work is Idlewild, Michigan, a historic Black resort town shaped by the Great Migration and the Black Radical Tradition. In 2020, she purchased her first home there—a 1950s house known as the Poindexter Residence and Motel—and began restoring it while developing it into a residency space for artists. Through her nonprofit, Black Eden Arts Alliance, Hicks has revived community initiatives such as the Idlewild Garden Club, digitized archival treasures, and launched a cooperative model for preserving property and cultural memory. “When I first arrived,” she recalls, “people started coming out of the woods and woodwork to show me their archival treasures… It felt like I was being let into a living family archive, and I realized that Idlewild itself is a repository of so many invisible histories.” Her goal is to help design and restore a living history museum, food forest, and artisan community where lineage, land, and Black self-determination converge, and where the community itself is the steward.

The Poindexter Residence and Motel featuring musician and landscaper Marcus Martin (Lydia Hicks photo)

Hicks’s practice is profoundly shaped by her family history. She has traced the legacies of her ancestors—her great-grandmother and great-granduncle, both organizers and preservationists—and connects their work to her own. She reflects, “I wept when I read my MacDowell bio because it recognized how I am embodying my great-grandmother in this work… there’s a sense that my practice is a continuation of what my family has been building all along.” This multigenerational lens informs her sense of purpose, grounding her art in relational care, intergenerational knowledge, and collective memory.

Lydia Hicks (right) with MSU faculty member and Hicks'collaborator Tama Hamilton-Wray (left) (Lydia Hicks photo)

Building on these investigations, Hicks’s approach is fully realized in 4 George, a collaborative exhibition with George Thomas, a multi-media artist known for his vivid box sculptures and paintings of Black cultural life. Conceived as a “speculative natural history museum that bends time and reanimates memory,” the project honors both Thomas’s lifelong commitment to community and Hicks’s alter ego, George Allen Hicks VI. Through sculpture, film, installation, and ephemeral artifacts, 4 George explores history as dynamic and entangled with land and people, offering a communal space for remembrance, creativity, and ongoing creation. “Idlewild was a living example of the beloved community,” Hicks observes. “Everyone was present and accounted for… the debutants and the farmworkers, the pastors and the pimps, sometimes they’re all the same people. I want the work to reflect that fullness of human experience.”

Hicks’s six-week MacDowell residency was pivotal in shaping this work. She describes, “The magic of MacDowell was really the regulation… the infrastructure includes the community of artists, the staff, and the history of all the incredible artists that came before. It allowed me to feel spacious and more like myself.” Immersed in this supportive environment, she organized files, created three new short films for the Idlewild anthology, and mapped out additional projects. “Being around each other in that way is so healing—not to mention the amazing conversations and the wild synchronicities in our work,” she notes, reflecting on the resonance between Idlewild and MacDowell as spaces of care, creativity, and interconnection.

A patch honoring Hicks' alter ego, George Allen Hicks VI (left), and Hicks' Papa, George Allen Hicks Jr. (right) (Lydia Hicks photo)

Beyond exhibitions, Hicks integrates preservation, architecture, and ecological stewardship into her practice. As Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Lake County, she develops frameworks to restore historic sites, support property owners, and foster sustainable community engagement. Her work is a form of hands-on lineage-making. “Building, gardening, or restoring a structure, helps me channel my ancestors. I feel their work and their care in every brick, every beam, every garden bed,” she says. Sculpture, film, and ritualized labor converge in her projects to create environments where memory, history, and creative possibilities are inseparable.

Ultimately, Hicks envisions Black history and existence as dynamic and living, realized through interconnected work that bridges generations, disciplines, and landscapes while offering models for communal care and sustainable futures. Her art is a practice of attention, tenderness, and curiosity. As she puts it, “I am building a world that allows me, and all of us, to show up as our fullest selves, to honor who came before us, and to imagine what we can create together.”

Learn more about Lydia on her website.

A work in progress from Hicks' MacDowell residency (MacDowell photo)

An view of Hicks' exhibition 4 George (MSU LookOut Gallery director, Steve Baikak photo)

Two works from Hicks' 4 George exhibition (MSU LookOut Gallery director, Steve Baikak photo)