The Brooklyn Museum will present “Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: ‘Ain’t I a Woman,’ ” an exhibit marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landmark Roe v. Wade Decision, set to run from January 20th to August 13th.
On the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) — and in the year after its overturning — Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: “Ain’t I a Woman” examines the long history of reproductive injustice in the United States from an activist point of view.
By foregrounding Black girls and Black incarcerated women, the exhibition expands the discourse on abortion access into a more nuanced conversation. Understanding that the right to abortion is not a standalone fight, Baxter illuminates its connections to other pressing human rights issues, as well as to the need for empathy and liberation.
A Philadelphia-based artist and prison abolitionist, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter (born 1981) employs autobiography as a means of instigating change in the carceral system. She is also the cofounder of the Dignity Act Now Collective, an advocacy group of Black activists and artists directly impacted by incarceration.
The exhibition features Baxter’s 2018 film “Ain’t I a Woman,” which links the inhumane conditions faced by incarcerated women to the national fight for reproductive rights. At once a documentary and a rap video, the film follows Baxter’s life from her turbulent youth in Philadelphia to her pregnancy, arrest, incarceration, and childbirth, culminating with her growth as an advocate and prison abolitionist.
Baxter shares her harrowing experience of being shackled for forty-three hours while giving birth, raising the question of who is considered a “woman” by society and the law — and who is considered worthy of human rights. The musical documentary presents Black incarcerated women’s access to safe health care as the necessary starting point for creating a social fabric that truly supports bodily autonomy for all.
Presented alongside the film is “Consecration to Mary,” seven works that connect the histories of abuse faced by Black children to “adultification bias,” a social reality in which Black youths are systemically treated as adults. In the piece, Baxter confronts and combats sexually exploitative nude photographs of a young Black girl taken by white American artist Thomas Eakins in 1882.
Baxter inserts herself into two of the photographs, to protect the violated, and covers the other five works, obscuring them from public view. When paired with Baxter’s documentary, “Consecration to Mary” underscores how, for Black women, the fight for bodily autonomy begins in childhood.
The Brooklyn Museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. For more information visit their website.
Photo of Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter provided.
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