BIO
Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities. – From the Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and other commissioners, charged by the King of France, with the examination of the animal magnetism, as practiced in Paris (1785)
Amy Hicks works with a range of time-based media including film, photography, video projection and low-tech animation. Through the acts of appropriation and recreation she engages in a process of endless redescriptions of the world. Her interest in history and theory influence the themes prevalent in her work which are concerned with the intersection between object and image, error and perception, science and speculation, and imagination and subversion.
Her award-winning films and videos have screened in museums, galleries, and film festivals around the globe including the Ann Arbor Film Festival (MI), Pacific Film Archive (CA), Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (Strassbourg, FR), diRosa Preserve: Art and Nature (CA), San Francisco International Film Festival (CA), Hosfelt Gallery (CA & NY), and Institute of Contemporary Art (PA). “ReAdaptation: the book series” toured nationally from 2008-10 after premiering in “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon” at the San Jose Museum of Art. Grants and fellowships include Individual Artist Grants from SFAC and Film Arts Foundation to a Djerassi Resident Artists Program Fellowship. Her collaborative multi-faceted project with IDOK Center for Research has screened on ACRE_TV, traveled internationally, and its newest configuration will be exhibited at Co-Lab Projects, Austin, Texas in October 2014. Her most recent work “Happiness, Free, for Everyone” premiered in Delaware and California in 2014. Amy Hicks teaches photography, video, and mixed media animation at the University of Delaware.
Amy Hicks is currently a curatorial member of Grizzly Grizzly.
CONTACT
Department of Art
University of Delaware
104 Recitation Hall
Newark, DE 19716-0010