Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter

It breaks my heart to think about how many people chose to look away... "I envisioned her not as tragic or as ruined but as an ordinary black girl. For her, the state of emergency was the norm, not the exception. The only difference between this girl and all the others who crossed her path or followed in her wake was that there was a photograph that hinted that something had happened, that enabled everyday violence to acquire the status of an event, a forensic picture of an act of sexual violence that was not deemed a crime at all."- Saidiya Hartman Deeply grateful to everyone who has supported me in uplifting this story. Thank you @_oroori_ @thechiquitachannel @nifleetwood @xavierasimmons @michaeljazul @kate.fowle @urbanarchivist @jshanker1 @debwillisphoto @jesse_krimes @ericapalan #saidiyahartman #fredmoten and all who have been moved to action. #art4justice

Black girls deserve to be loved and protected. Consecration to Mary, 2021 is a reimagining of Thomas Eakins' sexually exploitative photography of a young pre-pubescent Black girl forced to pose nude inside his home studio in 1882. My reinterpretations provide a counter narrative where I insert my own image in an effort to help shield the child from his predatory gaze.

Special thank you to @theartnewspaper.official for providing global coverage of the ongoing battle for institutional accountability at @pafacademy and @pafamuseum . So far, hundreds have signed on demanding sustained action that centers communal healing, repairations and repair. This includes a formal apology to those hurt most by their inaction and continued celebration of known sexual violator and abuser, Thomas Eakins', repatriation of the photographs to an African American institution and a significant investment in the arts and cultural production of Black girls and women within the city of Philadelphia. This campaign has been extended to include @cityofphiladelphia @muralarts @philamuseum @monument_lab . And calls on each institution to participate in repairative work led by the undersigned. "Today Eakins' is revered throughout Philadelphia and its art institutions. Eakins’s former home and studio at 1729 Mount Vernon Street was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965 (it now houses public art non-profit Mural Arts Philadelphia). The large landscaped traffic island in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), which hosts the city’s annual celebration on the 4 July national holiday, is named Eakins Oval. One of the star attractions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is his cinematic rendering of a late-19th century operating theatre, The Gross Clinic (1875), which the museum and PAFA kept in Philadelphia only after a frenzied fundraising campaign in 2008 that involved deaccessioning works from their collections in order to help raise the $68 million that the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Crystal Bridges Museum had offered to acquire the painting." *Link to petition in bio*

The woman who entered 1729 Mount Vernon Street on April 27, 2021 was not the same one who departed.... In 2002, Deborah Willis and Carla Williams were the first scholars to publish and critically contextualize Thomas Eakins’ photographs of the young Black girl at the center of my ongoing series Consecration to Mary in their book titled The Black Female Body: A Photographic History. Years later, that text became foundational to my research and understanding of the ways in which photography could be used as a vehicle for harm or a tool for repair. Now, more than two decades later, to have @debwillisphoto write in direct response to my work is profoundly meaningful. Her and @carlajwms scholarship helped open a critical pathway for artists like me to confront these histories, not only through critique, but also through acts of love and care. In the essay for the exhibition catalogue A Kind of Paradise: Artistic Counter-Narratives to Colonial-Era Photography, Deborah Willis writes "In Baxter's work, the archive is no longer a sealed container of the past but a living membrane through which memory moves. The photograph becomes an altar, a site of visual worship for the young girl and, by extension, for all those caught within photography's exploitative histories. This vision fulfills the project's desire to touch, shake up, encourage, and enchant. Consecration to Mary touches the heart through empathy, disrupts viewers' historical complacency, encourages reparation, and captivates through its quiet grace." Thank you Deborah Willis, Nanina Guyer, and everyone involved in this important exhibition and publication. I am truly honored to be included in this conversation alongside so many incredible artists who are actively reimagining the archive. A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art is now on view at the Museum Rietberg through September 6th. Curated by @nanina_guyer_ . Please purchase your copy of the catalogue at @spectorbooks @museumrietberg . Image 1: Picnic, 2024. Frida Orupabo. Image 4: Otjze II- Rituals of Initiation, 2022. Tuli Mekondjo. Image 6: Bugs 2, 2019. David Shongo.

Deeply grateful for the opportunity to witness Sasha Huber @sashahuber and Bindi Vora @bindi_vora in conversation today at the Museum Rietberg @museumrietberg in Switzerland❣️ Sasha and I first met virtually several years ago through Nicholas Mirzoeff @nickmirzoeff and despite living and working in different countries, remained in dialogue ever since. However, that connection only deepened during the summer of 2023 when Sasha recommended that my work be featured alongside hers in a forthcoming exhibition titled "A Kind of Paradise: Colonial-Era Photography in Contemporary Art" curated by Nanina Guyer @nanina_guyer_ . So today it felt especially meaningful to finally meet in person and spend some quality time together in her hometown of Zurich. #akindofparadise

Just wrapped up my first week in Genoa with a tour of the old city alongside an incredibly talented group of writers, poets, playwrights, composers, filmmakers, scholars and visual artists from all around the world❣️ Thank you @bogliascocenter and @awaw.award ! #inspired #Genoa #bogliascofoundation

Join artists Joiri Minaya, Katherine Sherwood, Gaby Collins-Fernandezand and myself alongside curator Carmen Hermo (@chermosa ) for The Brooklyn Rail's lunch time conversation series the New Social Environment at 1pm eastern tomorrow via zoom! Link in bio❣️ #thenewsocialenviornment #thebrooklynrail #Repost • @brooklynrail Artists Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter (@isisthasaviour ), Joiri Minaya (@joiriminaya ), and Katherine Sherwood (@k.d.sherwood ) and curator Carmen Hermo (@chermosa ) join artist Gaby Collins-Fernandez (@gmercedescf ) on Thursday (4/23) for a conversation on the occasion of Subvert, Repair, Reclaim: Contemporary Artists Take Back the Nude at the MFA, Boston (@mfaboston ). The group will discuss critically engaging with representations of the nude in Western art history by responding to objectification, exploitation, and erasure embedded within these images; confronting entrenched gender structures and power dynamics in their work that resonates with present-day issues of bodily autonomy, agency, and accountability; and how through performative gestures, archival interventions, and acts of redaction and repair, the artists in this exhibition challenge inherited narratives and expose the structures that have long governed visibility, authorship, and desire. You can register for this conversation on our events page linked in our bio. And you can see Subvert, Repair, Reclaim on view through August 2nd. #mfaboston @teigerfoundation #MarionBoultonKippyStroudFoundation

"A Kind of Paradise" curated by @nanina_guyer_ is now on view through September 6th at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, Switzerland! This exhibition showcases works by twenty internationally acclaimed artists drawing on historical imagery. Both poetic and visionary, the works explore how colonial imagery continues to define identity, history, and belonging. In doing so, they reveal how art can act as a healing force. More information 👉 link in bio @museumrietberg With #sammybaloji, @raphaelbarontini , @isisthasaviour , @d_a_n_b_o_y_d , @andreachungstudio , @omar_viktor , @lee.shulman , @sashahuber , @yukikihara , @giftedmold.archives , #dinhqle, @di_mathopa , @tuliphoenix , @tshepisomoropaa , @1alinemotta , #fridaorupabo, @rosanapaulino.oficial , #wendyredstar, @david_shongo , @zenaeca (in alphabetical order) Supported by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne; Media partners: Schweiz am Wochenende, @arte.tv , @bjp1854 , @monopolmagazin , letemps.ch, @magazine.poly 🗣️ Excerpt from “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Copyright © 2009, Chimamanda Adichie, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited. 🖼 Sasha Huber, Tailoring Freedom – Delia, profile, 2023 © 2026, ProLitteris, Zurich; Harvard University, courtesy the artist 🎥 @henneordnung #MuseumRietberg

Just had a deeply engaging conversation with a few curators from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. If you're in the area, please don't hesitate to drop in! I'll be here at @theprintcenter til 6pm❣️ #epiloguesoftheblackmadonna

Today is the final day to experience "Epilogues of the Black Madonna" at @theprintcenter . Thank you to everyone who has entered this portal to bare witness, share reflections, offer care, and support this work in ways seen and unseen. This exhibition has been a living act of sacred re-membering and your presence has been an essential part in it's unfolding. If you haven’t yet stepped into the space, there is still time. Gallery hours are 11am-6pm. Photo cred📸: Constance Mensh @cocobanal

Thank you so much for holding this truth with both urgency and care @interstellar_isabellar 💕✊🏾✊🏾 This work is not just about confronting the past... It's also about interrupting what we have been taught to revere in the present. It asks us unapologetically, to reconsider who is protected, who is made sacred, and who has been denied both. The beauty of the work is not in the softening of the truth but in our willingness to carry it. For me, this is the necessary work of care, the unbridled power of refusal, and the radical call to not only witness but act. It's time for reckoning. Link in bio! @pafacademy @visitpham @cityofphiladelphia "Philly should be simultaneously ashamed to still have landmarks named after this abuser and proud that an incredible Philadelphian artist like @isisthasaviour is making this kind of stunning work, highly celebrated work, confronting his legacy with heartwrenching beauty. It’s up at the Print Center @theprintcenter until April 4 - the very least we can do is show up and support the show!"- Isabella Segalovich #arthistory #thomaseakins #maryenochelizabethbaxter #photography #philadelphia

Black women and girls are worthy of veneration, reverence, and divine protection. "Consecration to Mary" began as a critical archival intervention but has since evolved into a necessary rupture that dismantles the very cosmology that made such violence possible. Thus, "Epilogues of the Black Madonna" places Black women and girls at the center of the divine, compelling us to question everything we have been taught about who and what can be held sacred. Don't miss your opportunity to experience this powerful installation tomorrow during my artist talk at the Print Center at 6pm! @theprintcenter Photography by Constance Mensh. @cocobanal Photo #1: Archival pigment prints on brushed aluminum in floating frames. Our Lady Mary, 2025. 48x64 Madonna Lactans. 2025. 48x74 The Viel, 2025. 48x64 The Anunciation, 2025. 57x57 Mater Dolorosa, 2025. 55×63 Custom prayer kneeler vitrines with archival metallic gilcée prints in antique and fabricated daguerreotype cases. Virgo Sacrata, 2025. Photo#5: Reverence for the Everyday Black Madonna, 2026. Archival pigment prints in picture frames. #epiloguesoftheblackmadonna #consecrationtomary #theprintcenter soloexhibition