Annemarie Lopez talks with writer, curator, educator, and cultural activist, Lydia Matthews about her journey into walking art

How to get lost

On a quiet backstreet in Brooklyn or along the winding paths of a Greek mountain village, you might spot Lydia Matthews walking. She may have no fixed destination, only a willingness to listen, to observe, to be in conversation with the world around her. A life-long educator, with an artist’s spirit, Matthews moves between Athens and New York, bringing people into deeper relationship with the places they inhabit. Her work doesn’t fit neatly into a single category; it spans contemporary art, social practice, ecological inquiry, and something more intimate: the slow, attentive art of being present.

About fifteen years ago, Matthews’ active and sporty past caught up with her and she underwent two hip replacements. It forced an early reckoning. “Before that, I felt old long before my time,” she says. “But the surgeries freed me from pain and opened a new physical freedom.” That liberation found its way into her teaching at The New School, New York, where she realized she no longer wanted to be confined to a classroom. The idea to create a course centred on walking came to her almost instinctively – “out of nowhere,” as she recalls – long before the practice gained wider recognition in art and academia.

At the time, she had been reading Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust and A Field Guide to Getting Lost, books that subtly influenced her thinking. “I wanted students to move through the world, not just study it.” What began as an art-focused course quickly expanded across disciplines, attracting students from urban studies, anthropology, design, and beyond. The cross-pollination was rich. Matthews encouraged them to consider walking as more than movement – as ritual, protest, pilgrimage, a form of research.

One early assignment required students to give up their digital maps. In a cemetery in Queens, with a clear view of Manhattan’s skyline and its bridges, she’d ask them to put their phones away. Using only the position of the sun and their shadows, turning their bodies into makeshift sundials or compasses, they had to find their way back to campus. The route was up to them – by bridge, ferry, foot – but GPS was off-limits. “It was risky,” she admits. “I never asked permission. But it was deeply transformative.” The students learned to trust their senses and find an ease with uncertainty – skills often left out of the syllabus.

That exercise became a turning point in the course, opening space for students to pursue their own walking-based projects. One urban studies major, Gaby Lopez Dena, walked the entire length of the A-line subway route – above ground – documenting the changing landscape of Brooklyn’s industrial zones and neighbourhoods. She turned the experience into a photographic accordion book, later exhibited internationally. Another Australian student, Fernando do Campo, who was transferring his bird watching skills to his new home in New York City, created a participatory walk in Central Park. He designed it to help others see the city through the eyes of a birder. That walk marked a shift in his own practice – from abstract painting to ecological observation. Now back in Australia, he teaches from that same perspective.

Walking as suffering and healing

Matthews own walking has led her far beyond New York. One place she has returned to is Prespa, a remote, lake region in Northern Greece that straddles the borders of Albania, North Macedonia, and Greece. Her family comes 
from the nearby village of Siatista. “Prespa is deeply personal,” she says. “It felt like stepping back fifty years in time when I first visited.” Later, she joined the scientific committee for the Walking Arts Encounters (WAC), an international gathering of artists and thinkers working at the intersection of walking, ecology, and culture.

But Prespa’s complex history – including the trauma of the Greek Civil War that displaced Matthews’ family – has become a central thread in her work there. Her father grew up in the region, and years later she came across his wartime diaries. Working with filmmaker Jeffrey Skoller, they produced an experimental documentary work about his experiences. That process, in turn, deepened her engagement with the landscape and its histories. She began designing walks that trace the paths of conflict and migration, weaving in archival materials and oral histories from local residents. “Walking became a way to explore both suffering and healing,” she says.

Her most recent workshops in Prespa reflect a gentler but deepening interest in ecology and ancestral knowledge. Working alongside local biologists like Nikos Giannakis and environmental writer Julian Hoffman, Matthews has co-led programs that explore the relationships between human and more-than-human life. “This year, I’m focusing on foraging,” she says. “Reconnecting with ancestral knowledge of plants as food and medicine.” For Matthews, it’s a shift from viewing landscape as picturesque backdrop to experiencing it as a living archive, a kind of open-air pharmacy. These sensory, place-based encounters invite participants to slow down, to observe, and to enter into new forms of attention.

Crucially, the work is grounded in collaboration – with local communities as much as with artists and scientists. “Building trust takes time,” she says. “The Prespa gathering isn’t a festival. It’s an intentional encounter.” Matthews is careful to avoid what she calls “neo-colonial dynamics” – artists parachuting in and walking through villages without engaging the people who live there. Her ability to speak Greek allows her to move between cultures with nuance and care. Local businesses see subtle benefits from the gathering, but growth is measured and rooted in sustainability. What she hopes to see more of, she says, is longer-term residencies – opportunities for artists to embed themselves in the region to exchange knowledge, not just pass through.

Collective well-being

The idea of collective well-being runs through all of Matthews’ projects. “Well-being should be collective, not just individual or commodified,” she says. Her foraging walks connect directly to memories of her family using herbal remedies – knowledge that has been overshadowed by the rise of modern medicine. She’s inspired by younger artists and ecologists like Nikos Tsilis, who are working to reclaim and revitalize traditional plant knowledge. “Displacement and immigration fracture these connections,” she says, “but art and walking can open pathways to healing and remembering.”

Looking ahead, Matthews envisions more workshops that bring people together across cultures, disciplines, and generations. The field of walking arts is still evolving, she says – becoming more inclusive, more attentive to local voices, more rooted in care. “I want these projects to foster lasting relationships rather than brief interventions.”

Walking, for Matthews, is both method and art. It’s how she explores the world and how she invites others to do the same. “It’s a way,” she says, “to reclaim presence, community, and our relationship with the world around us.” From New York to Athens to Prespa, she keeps walking, following the invisible paths between what is lost and what can still be found.