
Catherine Gund uncovers the whitewashed history of Faith Ringgold’s masterpiece “For the Women’s House” and follows its 50-year journey from Rikers Island to the Brooklyn Museum in the documentary Paint Me a Road Out of Here.
The documentary made its World Premiere at DC/DOX and opens in theaters on Friday, February 7, 2025 beginning at Film Forum in New York.
Featuring artists Faith Ringgold (who died at age 93 last spring) and Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, Paint Me a Road Out of Here uncovers the whitewashed history of Ringgold’s monumental painting, “For the Women’s House,” following its 50-year journey from Rikers Island to the Brooklyn Museum in a poignant, funny and true parable of a world without mass incarceration.
A great painting tells a compelling story. When its provenance deepens that story, it becomes an extraordinary and impactful performance piece. Emmy-nominated and Oscar-shortlisted documentarian and activist Catherine Gund tracks the labyrinthine ordeal borne by Faith Ringgold’s 1971 painting “For the Women’s House” — originally created for the women incarcerated on Rikers Island, then relegated to mishandling, defacing and deep storage.
Artist and rapper Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, herself formerly incarcerated and commissioned to create a new work for the Rikers women, bands together with Ringgold, politicians, philanthropists and corrections officers against Kafkaesque bureaucracy to liberate the original painting from Rikers and, more profoundly, Black women from mass incarceration.
“On December 15, 2021, I first encountered Faith Ringgold’s painting “For the Women’s House” in the Rikers Island jail complex with a group of advocates examining the state of the facility. I had no idea the painting was there. I barely knew it existed. I had not anticipated that it would open a portal for me to see grave and moral lessons so clearly. I thought about what is seen, who is watched, who isn’t, who gets to see things. The painting was not being seen despite being created explicitly for incarcerated women to engage with it. Incarcerated people live under complete surveillance, simultaneously visible to those who control the inside but blocked from those on the outside.” – director Catherine Gund.
Watch the official trailer for Paint Me a Road Out of Here.