The Bible

In her series on The Bible, Marta Ibarrondo confronts the institutional roots of gender inequality within the Catholic tradition. Raised in the faith, she interrogates the enduring power of scripture in shaping, and justifying, hierarchies that exclude women from positions of spiritual authority. Drawing from biblical passages long used to relegate women to subordinate roles, Ibarrondo pairs them with vintage sexist advertisements, revealing a disturbing continuity between sacred doctrine and secular bias.
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Painted in bold, arresting pink, these verses are both illuminated and indicted. Beneath twenty layers of acrylic paint, she embeds original Bible pages, exposing only the offending texts, a material metaphor for the burden of tradition and the selective opacity of doctrine. The resulting works are palimpsests of critique: devotional in form, dissident in message. Ibarrondo transforms scripture into site, inviting reflection on the ways belief systems calcify inequality under the guise of divine will.