Lydia Marie Hicks
Crew
Biography
lydia marie hicks is a feral artist raised by farmers and craftspeople whose practice interweaves storytelling, deep ecology, and process-based adaptive reuse. A product of the Great Migration and the Midwest, hicks seeks to forge connections across identity, origin, and probability patterns, often drawing on their background in zoology they blend social histories and natural histories to generate grandiose metaphors for reconnection or explanation. Holding an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts and a BS in Zoology (+business, communications, francophone studies, and scuba diving) from Cal Poly Humboldt, hicks’s work spans film, installation, and site-responsive media. Known for the video and place-based installation Black in the Water (2018) and the experimental documentary Rediscovering the Scientist (2016), hicks’s projects take a systems approach to challenge dominant narratives and celebrate marginalized communities. Their cinematography has been featured by National Geographic, premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and showcased in international venues. Unbound by medium, hicks uses film as a cornerstone in a practice centered on creating environments where ideas may be experienced and observed to foster dialogue on culture, ecology, healing, and memory. hicks has received support from institutions including the EarthFire Institute, WildSumaco Biological Station, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Guild Hall, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. With an emphasis on connection, reclamation, and resilience, they strive to restore links between people, places, and legacies, building spaces for stories that honor resistance, healing, and transformation.
Known For
Kevin Jerome Everson’s unique observational gaze collapses Hollywood histrionics and American carceral history into one frame, as a Moscow prison break scene from Andrew Marlowe’s original screenplay for Air Force One—read in affectless voiceover on the film’s soundtrack—is offset by handheld footage taken in the Ohio State Reformatory, where the scene was filmed.
Air Force Two
Round Seven centres on mysterious occurrences in and around the city of Mansfield, Ohio, including UFO sightings, the closing of Mansfield Tire and the famous 1978 boxing match between Sugar Ray Leonard and local prizefighter Art McKnight.
Round Seven
In The Release, professional dancers enact a classic football gesture as a rhythmic dance. Intentionally slowing down the speed of 16mm film, Everson divorces the moves from their original functionality, revealing their engagement with the entire body and surrounding environment. Drawing connections between athletics and performance, the film foregrounds the art inherent in sport.
The Release
Richland Descending is based on a Gerhard Richter painting and the stag films produced in Mansfield, Ohio in the late 1960s.
Richland Descending
In Kevin Jerome Everson’s deeply affecting Ears, Nose and Throat, a woman’s testimonial faculties are confirmed through medical examinations before she recites a tragic story, whose horrors we don't see, hear, or smell, but can imagine far too easily.
Ears, Nose and Throat
What Richard Bradley did before he took down the Confederate flag at City Hall in San Francisco during the mayoral term of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Employees of the Cleveland Water Department on the hunt for leaks in the infrastructure in Cuyahoga County.
Sound That
Lake Idlewild is the idyllic Black resort town of Idlewild Michigan, is where Danielle Thesiger rows.
Lake Idlewild
Two gentlemen making a living hustling metal in Cleveland, Ohio.
Fe26
Zoologist Maya Perry of the Detroit Zoo waxes poetically about returning the Puerto Rican Crested Toad back to the wild.