TYPOGRAPHIC PUBLICATION
WHITEWASHED
It all comes out in the wash
*Selected for the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) archives
'Whitewashed' is a typographic, research-led project that explores communication systems of control and concealment within Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.
Using the metaphor of laundering, it examines how the Irish State and religious institutions at the time rinsed, silenced, and distorted the narratives of the women confined within. Through the visual and material language of washing (scrubbing, rinsing, folding, and concealing) ‘Whitewashed’ explores how control was exerted not only over bodies, but over truth itself. It questions what it means to cleanse, what it means to stain, and who gets to decide which marks remain. Using “whitewashing” as both metaphor and method, the work investigates why women were scrubbed from public memory, their identities laundered, and their stories bleached beyond recognition.
The book draws on archival research, survivor testimony, and conceptual development. Through expressive typography, layering, redaction, and print media, it reflects the manipulation of perception and the divide between public knowledge and private suffering.
Using the metaphor of laundering, it examines how the Irish State and religious institutions at the time rinsed, silenced, and distorted the narratives of the women confined within. Through the visual and material language of washing (scrubbing, rinsing, folding, and concealing) ‘Whitewashed’ explores how control was exerted not only over bodies, but over truth itself. It questions what it means to cleanse, what it means to stain, and who gets to decide which marks remain. Using “whitewashing” as both metaphor and method, the work investigates why women were scrubbed from public memory, their identities laundered, and their stories bleached beyond recognition.
The book draws on archival research, survivor testimony, and conceptual development. Through expressive typography, layering, redaction, and print media, it reflects the manipulation of perception and the divide between public knowledge and private suffering.