Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter
Award-Winning Multidisciplinary Artist, Writer & Cultural Worker
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter
Award-Winning Multidisciplinary Artist, Writer & Cultural Worker
Biography
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, writer, pedagogue, and cultural worker based in Philadelphia PA. As a visionary thought leader creating socially conscious music, film, performance, and visual art, her practice embodies resilience, care, and community-centeredness while working at the intersections of reproductive justice, black feminist thought and transformative change.
In recent years, Baxter worked as an executive producer as well as starred alongside the indomitable Faith Ringgold in Paint Me a Road Out of Here (PMAR), which premiered at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC on June 14, 2024.
Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at venues including MoMA PS1, New York; the African American Museum of Philadelphia; Frieze LA; Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia; Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Waterbury, Vermont; Martos Gallery, New York; the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Ohio; Brown University, Rhode Island; the Schomburg, New York; Yale Art Gallery, Connecticut; the National Museum of World Cultures Leiden, Netherlands; Two Rivers Gallery, British Columbia; as well as a solo exhibition in 2023 at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Ms. Baxter is also an inaugural 2017 Right of Return fellow; a 2018 and 2019 Mural Arts Philadelphia Reimagining Reentry fellow; a 2019 Leeway Foundation Transformation awardee; a 2021 Ed Trust Justice fellow; a 2021 Frieze Impact Prize award winner; a 2022 S.O.U.R.C.E Studio Corrina Mehiel Fellow; 2022 Art 4 Justice grantee partner; 2022 Pratt Forward fellow; 2022 Artist2Artist Art Matters Foundation grantee and grantor; and a 2023 Soros Justice fellow.
On February 2, 2024, Baxter received a Governors’ Pardon from Josh Shapiro and the CommonWealth of Pennsylvania, thus honoring her transformative work in the arts and culture sector as well as Baxter's 17 year commitment to communal healing, advocacy and repair.
Speaker Videos
Marking Time Symposium- In Conversation: Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter and Anisa Jackson
Art: Panel Discussions and Book Launch, Mickalene Thomas / Portrait of an Unlikely Space
Rendering Justice: Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter
Do We Look Free?: Art/Prisons/Liberation
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter aka Isis Tha Saviour (Reimagining Reentry Fellow)
Speech Topics
The Power to Rise: Turning Struggles Into Strength
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter’s life was once marked by hardship, struggle, and choices that led her to prison. At a time when it seemed her story was written in darkness, she was forced to confront the reality of confinement head-on. Inside those walls, Mary endured unthinkable challenges, including giving birth while shackled, yet she refused to let those moments define her future. She turned to art in many forms—writing, music, and visual expression—as a way to reclaim her voice and begin again. That spark of creativity and resilience became her path to healing, advocacy, and leadership.
Today, Mary inspires audiences by showing what it looks like to move from struggle to strength and from confinement to purpose. Her keynote is a journey of redemption, resilience, and the power of transformation, reminding everyone that no matter how dark the past, there is always a way forward.
Art That Moves Us: How Creativity Becomes Activism
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter shows how art doesn’t just reflect the world—it can remake it. Drawing from a life that moved from incarceration to influence, she explains how writing, music, film, and visual storytelling became tools to reclaim her voice, build community, and challenge systems that harm the most vulnerable. She breaks down what turns a personal story into public impact: centering lived experience, creating with intention, and inviting people to act. Audiences see how creative practice can shift narratives, open doors for policy change, and transform pain into purpose. This is a call to turn talents into tools and to use culture as a lever for justice.
Audience takeaways:
- How to translate lived experience into creative work that mobilizes people.
- A simple framework for moving from expression to impact: story → strategy → action.
- Ways to build partnerships with schools, museums, and grassroots groups to amplify change.
- Practical first steps to launch an art-for-impact project in your campus, company, or community.
Women Behind Bars: Stories, Truths & the Work Ahead
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter invites audiences to see incarceration through the lives of women. She shares her own journey, including the realities of pregnancy and birth while in custody, and lifts up the stories of women she met inside whose paths were shaped by trauma, poverty, caregiving, and survival. Through honest storytelling and art, Mary shows how gender shapes every step of the carceral experience: health care, safety, family separation, and the fragile road home. She makes the case that when women are caged, children and communities carry the sentence too. Most importantly, she offers a path forward with concrete steps for compassion, policy change, and community support so women can heal, reunite with their families, and lead.
Audiences will take away:
- A deeper understanding of the unique challenges women face in prison.
- Inspiration to see women’s resilience and leadership even in the harshest conditions.
- Practical ways to support women returning home to their families and communities.
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