Much of Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter’s early life was dedicated to defying unfortunate circumstances. For starters, her mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which made it challenging at best for her to care for Baxter. At the age of eleven, Baxter became a ward of the state.
Later, due to financial constraints, Baxter had to drop out of Penn State during her junior year. Despite her valiant efforts to “do the right thing” and improve her life, it seemed as if her efforts were for naught. To sustain her existence, Baxter then made choices that landed her in Riverside Correctional Facility, a prison located in Northeast Philadelphia. Only four days after her intake into the facility, she gave birth to her son while shackled to a hospital bed.
“Because my birthing process was so traumatic, I needed something to anchor me back in my body. And then also, in a way, to witness myself and witness what had happened and document that,” Baxter says. After giving birth, she found her way back to writing; she’d identified as an artist since childhood. What began with drawing and other forms of visual art transformed into poetry and, later, hip-hop.
In the early 2010s, a few years after she was released from prison, Baxter became a mainstay in the Philly underground hip-hop scene, performing under the moniker of Isis Tha Saviour. After a while, she grew disenchanted with the scene and disinterested in pursuing the sort of fame that resulted in radio play or getting signed to a label.
“It just didn’t fit with what I was trying to do,” Baxter says. “I had a lot of tension in those spaces.”
Around this time, Baxter was laid off from her job, driving her to reconsider continuing education. She decided to go back to her roots and focus on visual art, enrolling in the Community College of Philadelphia where she majored in art and design.
Soon, her foray into visual and multidisciplinary art catapulted Baxter into public acclaim, providing an art practice that felt more meaningful than what she’d experienced in Philly’s rap scene. Although her journey had not been linear or easy, Baxter’s dedication to self, craft, expression and truth helped her to become one of the nation’s most poignant voices in contemporary art.
Spirituality is a crucial element in Baxter’s life and artistic practice. It anchors her amid emotional turbulence that stems from her past experiences. By incorporating spiritual practices into her routine, she cultivates a grounding force that helps her process trauma and channel her pain into meaningful art.
Her solo exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum opened in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, highlighting reproductive injustice in the United States and referencing the artist’s own birthing experience. She also became the subject and executive producer of Paint Me a Road Out Of Here, a film that traces the movement of Faith Ringgold’s painting, “For the Women’s House,” from Rikers Island, a New York City prison, to the Brooklyn Museum. Consecration to Mary, perhaps her most profound work to date, is a project that holds truth to the power and offers an artist’s approach to healing.
While working at the Mural Arts Program, Baxter was researching Thomas Eakins (a renowned American artist) and happened upon an image by the 19th-century artist that focused on a prepubescent Black female child posing nude on a lounge chair.
Despite being deemed a sexual deviant by his peers, Eakins’ legacy loomed large in Philadelphia through his historical marker on the 1700 block of Mount Vernon and the Eakins Oval in the middle of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Until Baxter created a petition to have the original pornographic images removed from the digital archive of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Eakins was an instructor, they were the most downloaded files from the archive.
In a counternarrative piece, Baxter took a healing and reparative approach that shows her embracing the child as the little one shies away from the camera, as well as another image where Baxter is seen covering the child with a throw. “I’m looking at this work as Afrofuturism, like the ability of time travel and make interventions in these very horrible archives,” Baxter says. “How can we restore dignity and protection in times when these people didn’t receive it?” In 2021, thanks in large part to her efforts, the images were removed from the archive.
“Artists have to be willing to not just stop at a dialogue,” Baxter emphasizes.“The elites want to intellectualize. How much more research do we need on slavery in order to get reparations? They like to keep it in this intellectual sphere. No, art is a tool, and it’s supposed to function in a way where it can have an impact and create change. It can’t just be a conversation in the museum.”
After years of navigating her artistic path, largely without mentorship, Baxter now values the relationships she has built with fellow artists and mentors. The network she’s built fuels her creativity and reinforces the idea that healing can be a collective endeavor. Through shared experiences and collaboration, art becomes a tool for communal healing, allowing her to empower others while addressing systemic injustices.
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, also known as Isis Tha Savior, creates work that exemplifies the transformative power of art. Her commitment to confronting uncomfortable truths serves as a powerful reminder that the journey of healing, while often fraught with challenges, can lead to profound understanding. As she continues to amplify marginalized voices, she reminds us that art is not just a conversation starter; it’s a catalyst for action and a pathway to justice.
This article originally appeared in the 2024 Winter issue of Love Now Magazine with the theme of Healing. You can read more stories like Mary’s here.
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