Paint Me a Road Out of Here
by Hope Madden
In the spring of this year, the world lost a fearless, vivid and deeply American voice when Faith Ringgold died at 93.
The artist, author and activist who made sure New York understood that art was political shared her talent in 1971 to inspire the women incarcerated on Rikers Island. Her painting “For the Women’s House” depicted, in glorious color and bold images, what their future could be, answering the request from one inmate to “paint me a road out of here.”
Director Catherine Gund catches up with that painting 50 years later, creating a parallel between “For the Women’s House” and those incarcerated women with her documentary Paint Me a Road Out of Here.
Ringgold wanted the women incarcerated on Rikers to be able to see a future for themselves without Rikers, without prison, without cages. Gund wants viewers to see a future without mass incarceration.
Gund fills out the narrative with the perspective of a newer voice in the activism and art worlds, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter. In many ways, Baxter carries the torch Ringgold lit. But Baxter lived a life much closer to those of the women in Rikers, and the clarity of that insider’s view defines her art and powerfully influences Gund’s film.
The spine of the movie is the painting’s journey from Rikers to freedom. Like those imprisoned on the island off NY, “For the Women’s House” was subject to inexplicable, bureaucratic, sanctioned carelessness and cruelty that seemed meant specifically to damage it, hide it. The masterpiece worth millions was at one point painted white.
Gund surrounds the fight to free the painting and bring it home to the Brooklyn Museum with archival footage of Ringgold over the years, uncovering her struggle to find recognition. We also witness Baxter’s similar challenges, from helping incarcerated women to create their own inspirational murals to finding her own success in the contemporary art world.
The full picture is one of hope in art, of power in challenging institutions, and of women demanding freedom.
