Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter is a multimedia artist, activist, prison reform advocate and speaker[1] based in Brooklyn, New York.[2] She is best known for creating socially conscious visual art, film, and music, and raps under the stage name of Isis Tha Saviour.
Baxter was born in 1981,[3] and grew up in Philadelphia.[4] As a child, Baxter recalls stealing food stamps from her cousin and cutting them into pieces for use in a collage.[5] She was raised by her mother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.[4]
From 2010 to 2017, Baxter focused on making music and a hip-hop artist career.[6] She performs the stage name of Isis Tha Saviour, which she chose for Isis, the Egyptian goddess of motherhood.[4]
In 2020, Baxter's video installation was included in the "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration" exhibit at MOMA PS1.[9][7]
In 2021, Baxter worked as an office manager for Mural Arts Philadelphia, which is based in the Thomas Eakins House.[6] That year, she released Consecration to Mary, a photographic series based on a "sexually exploitative nude photographs of a young Black girl" taken by Thomas Eakins, a serial sexual predator,[6] in 1882.[10] Baxter superimposes images of herself over the girl in the original photo, creating a new image where the victim is protected.[11][12] Baxter herself has been critical of Eakins, writing an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer "decrying the city's veneration of Eakins".[13]
In 2023, Baxter was featured in a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, titled ""Ain't I a Woman"[2][14][15] and released a song with the same name, a reference to the poem Ain't I a Woman? by abolitionist Sojourner Truth.[16] The museum exhibit presented two works, a short film and a multi-part photographic piece.[14] The song was an original hip-hop composition released under her performance name Isis Tha Saviour.[17] Baxter drew upon her own experiences of being shackled during childbirth to "underscore the through-lines between mass incarceration and slavery".[11] Author Nicole Fleetwood further writes: "Baxter links the experiences of contemporary black women in US prisons to the experiences of enslaved black women, especially regarding their reproductive labor and the disorganization of the black family by racial capitalism."[18]
Baxter served as an executive producer and co-starred with Faith Ringgold in the documentary "Paint Me a Road Out of Here", which premiered at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on June 14, 2024.[15][17] The film interweaves the stories of Ringgold and Baxter, exploring their efforts to "make change for incarcerated and impoverished women."[19]
Baxter is a co-founder of the Dignity Act Now Collective.[20]
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