During her ICI Fellowship in 2021, Lydia Y. Nichols conducted environmental-ethnographic research on the dialogic relationship between the Mississippi River, Black women and motherhood, and infrastructures of control, through a 5,000-mile road trip up the Great River Road from Venice, Louisiana, to Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and back to New Orleans, with her toddler son.
Nichols is a native to New Orleans, whose work considers the lived experience, ancestral memory, and historical imaginary of race and their impacts on Black aesthetics in the outdoors. She is a contributing curator to ICI’s Notes for Tomorrow, and a Rising: Climate in Crisis resident at Tulane University’s A Studio in the Woods (2020-21).
This Fellowship is made possible by a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, with the additional support of ICI's Board of Trustees.
