Mary Fisher has spent a lifetime giving voice to the voiceless. From the hush of hospices to the halls of power, she’s proven that one woman’s courage can yield change. Not long after her own HIV diagnosis, Mary Fisher mounted a world stage in Houston, TX, to address the 1992 Republican National Convention where she stunned the assembled thousands (and broadcast audience of millions) with her historic speech, “A Whisper of AIDS.” Her address from that evening is well-remembered 30 years later and is featured in countless rhetoric texts as a model of advocacy persuasion. It’s been ranked (Oxford Press) as one of the “100 Best American Speeches of the 20th Century.” But Mary didn’t stop there. Twenty-two years and countless actions later, Mary was honored as a global Disruptor, receiving a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award in the company of NIH Director Francis Collins and others. It’s one of many tributes paid to her including five honorary doctorates. Art and advocacy have filled Mary's life. She’s authored six books, given countless speeches and interviews, and traveled the globe as a Special Representative of the United Nations representing the call to justice and healing for those most affected by global neglect and AIDS.
Throughout her life, Mary has balanced her love of making art with her commitments as an advocate. Her message-bearing sculptures, quilts, and stylized textiles have found a ready market from the halls of U.S. embassies to the homes of private collectors. Her work as a world-class jewelry designer has blended with her unending passion as an activist, yielding lines of bracelets produced by vulnerable women in Africa and nations around the world. Her work is a call to action: The 100 Good Deeds Bracelet generated over 4 million acts of kindness. Mary’s aesthetic is at once elegant and accessible, subtle and strong. Just as certainly, her advocacy is unquestioned. For decades, through art and action, she has inspired and given a voice to those muted by injustice, poverty, illness and fear. Mary has lived longer by any measure than the world thought possible that long- ago night in Houston.
In 2012, while recovering from treatments for an aggressive breast cancer, she authored a second memoir. “My first memoir in 1995 was my story about dying,” she explained. “Messenger is my story about living.” The years have been a gift, and Mary has used them well. She’s never been quieted in her calls for diversity, equity and inclusion. She’s celebrated for her oratory that inspires others, is a recognized patron of the arts from Broadway to local theater, and is a proven and tireless campaigner for compassion and community, encouraging others to find ways to heal a broken world. In 2020, her long-held dream was realized when she hugged her first grandchild – an experience that could never have been imagined three decades earlier. Given her passion for action, Mary’s years of survival have become years of service to those she meets, a remarkable story of grace still unfolding. Beyond advocacy, Fisher is also a committed artist. Several of her art pieces are part of the Art for AIDS collection featured at UNAIDS in Geneva, and she frequently exhibits her work in U.S. galleries
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