Historically, various religious institutions have manipulated historical figures and spiritualities to impose control and violence. From the 18th century until 1996, in the context of Ireland, the Catholic Church kept the Magdalene Laundries open and running, institutions intended to supposedly “welcome” the so-called “fallen women”; single mothers, sex workers and girls who had been abused, who under a paternalistic and charitable discourse, were locked up and forced to work washing the sheets of other institutions as well as the clothes of the oligarchy. Isolated from their communities, separated from their own children as punishment and with their labor force exploited, Irish women who dissented from the patriarchal mandate resisted through their memory and their current denunciation of said violence. This policy of violence against women has continued in the context of Europe, now inflicted through institutional racism towards migrant mothers controlled by Social Services, who under a paternalistic discourse, are separated from their children through racist, classist and sexist laws.

The series of banners claim religious figures such as Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary as what they were: a sex worker and a single mother, reconciling Christian spirituality with the reality of those women who have historically been persecuted and abused by those in power, as well as creating a series of images that form a narrative intertwined between the experience of Irish women subjected to the Magdalene Laundries and the situation of migrant women who resist the violence of contemporary institutional racism.

The banners were first unveiled at Sirius Art Centre in Cork City, Ireland.

2021 Oil on canvas on canvas · set of 4 banners. 150cm x 400cm (approximate measurements for each piece)