PILAR
ALBARRACÍN
ONE AND A THOUSAND WOMEN
A woman lies in a pool of blood in a street in Seville.
Another appears camouflaged among some dummies in the window
of a big department store in the same city. On top of a
car belonging to some Moroccan immigrants there is a girl
in traditional dress, roped to the rest of the bundles on
the luggage rack. Dressed in traditional Andalusian costume
and in the commanding presence of a bull’s head, a
magnificent woman is gagged and tied to a chair. They have
all been used or abused by a system that considers them
chattels, consumer goods. They are all Pilar Albarracín.
Through her mises-en scène and performances, Pilar
Albarracín reveals the drama of the structures used
for domination and shows us the violence to which women
are subjected. However, she does not do it through moralizing
dogmatism, but with the irony and sarcasm of surreal visions
and in her own jocular style. Although only one, she personifies
many: the gypsy, the peasant, the housewife, the prostitute,
the folclórica (popular singer), the immigrant, and
the injured girl. In representing subordination to gender,
social class and national or ethnic identity, she shows
that her analysis of symbolic structures is consistent with
what has been said in the most influential pronouncements
of recent decades.
Levy Strauss said that identity could be a game of “floating
signifiers”, but that it is above all a set of representations
that tie us to tradition and the status quo. In the Romantic
period, a return to specific identity came about as a reaction
to the internationalization of the Industrial Revolution,
the same thing is occurring again at a time when globalization
dissolves local differences or reduces them to easy-to-digest
ethnic clichés. Hence the proliferation of artists
who dig down to the anthropological roots of their culture,
especially the women who, like Shirin Neshat or Pilar Albarracín
herself, question the role they have been given in this
game.
Albarracín takes the most stereotypical aspects
of “Andalusian-ness”, which the Franco régime
turned into a cliché of “Spanishness”,
and dives playfully and critically into them. Food, folklore,
religion and the rural economy are fundamental themes in
her work. In her performance Spanish Omelette (Tortilla
a la española), 1999, she cuts away pieces of her
dress to “cook herself” in a metaphoric ceremony
of self-immolation, while the sculpture Iberian Luxury (Lujo
ibérico) 2001, is made up of a beautiful string of
chorizos and black puddings in silk, and black and red velvet,
hanging from the ceiling on giant meat hooks. The Reliquaries
(Relicarios), 1993, are sold as modern day lucky charms.
They contain a photograph of the artist and a piece of the
shirt she wears to paint in; in them she ridicules the protective,
mystic and almost sacred role of the artist. The series
Ora et labora, 2001, presents a self-satisfied peasant going
about her tasks in an idyllic context. They convey the fictional
nature of the happiness brought by work when one accepts
one’s place on the social scale.
Basing herself on a post-modernism which facilitates transition
from discipline to discipline, and aware of the power of
new technologies, Pilar Albarracín uses video, sculpture,
photography, installations, painting or fashion design with
ductility. However, performances are her most radical statement
and they mark out a territory on which she has projected
her rebelliousness in a direct, primary way. Her art is
a metaphor for insubordination and her appearances in public
spaces make use of the surprise factor and act as social
shock therapy. Untiteled. Blood in the Street (S/T. Sangre
en the calle), 1992, were seven events played out in seven
locations in Seville in which different types of women had
experienced some type of incident. In Shop Windows (Escaparates),
1993-95, she also interacted in an urban context, this time
taking the place of the dummies in shop windows. References
to beauty as a prison appear in Night 1002 (La noche 1002),
2001, where she demonstrates what Virginia Woolf called
the “hypnotic power of domination”: a fascinating
visual fusion converts the tinkling eroticism of a belly
dance into the jangling sounds of the chains of oppression.
Pilar Albarracín’s world is full of parodies
and tragi-comedies that verge on cathartic paroxysm. There
are flamenco dancers with spots on their dresses that are
bloodstains: Dots, 2001. There is a savage dance where her
partner is a wineskin which spills liquid on her with each
movement: The Goat (La cabra), 2001. There is a session
of cante jondo (flamenco singing) where she shouts out her
laments in crescendo and ends tearing off her dress, clawing
out her heart and throwing it literally on the floor amidst
orgasmic groans: No Singing (Prohibido el cante), 2000.
All of these are farcical scenes of dances where eroticism
and death are intertwined, and are extraordinary examples
of the outbursting that leads to release. They express in
contemporary terms the idea of a “pathetic body”,
a body that suffers all types of wounds and tensions, and
connect with the theatre of the grotesque and rituals of
cruelty. In contrast with religious ceremonies which seek
to perpetuate systems of belief, contemporary performance
has a critical potential that aims to destroy those rituals
to achieve a regenerative catharsis. Shock, tears or laughter
are all valid ways of doing this. Art is therefore a therapy:
it allows one to become immersed in one’s own devils,
but with the awareness that these are the product of ideology
and social structures.
The construction of dynamic situation-provoking objects
which require active audience participation has played an
important part in Pilar Albarracín’s development.
Duchamp said that it was the spectator who, through their
interpretation, create the play. Pilar goes even further
as she believes that intellectual analysis is not enough,
and looks for convulsive interaction with the spectator
who must, literally, suffer (or enjoy) the play, both physically
and emotionally. She achieves this with pieces such as The
Trip (El viaje), 2002: a car full of immigrants which is
crammed with packages in which the spectators, between unavoidable
bursts of laughter, experiment the sensations (the smells,
the jolts, and so on) of the journeys of thousands of North
Africans on Spanish roads. Seeing is Believing (Si no lo
veo no lo creo), 2002, consisted of panoramic viewers which
she created in the cove of San Vicente in Pollença.
Scenes from other waters (boats full of illegal immigrants,
pirates, the slaughter of tuna) came together virtually
in the tourist-thronged sea of Mallorca. Eco-crimes, people
being exploited or fantasies about freedom clash with a
relaxing hedonistic context. In Divan, 2002 the spectator
is invited to lie down on a replica of Freud’s couch
as if he were about to begin therapy, and as he does so
the weight of all his misfortunes invades him. This emotional
clash is again produced in Mirror, Mirror (Espejito), 2001,
a hilarious mirror that reminds us of Snow White, but in
which every passer-by who looks at him or herself is insulted
with “You’re ugly!"
In the urgent need to communicate and the challenge to
established modes of expression present in Pilar Albarracín’s
early work, we could sense a rebellious taste for the coarseness
of language. In her latest production we observe a greater
sobriety of style, but the communicative intensity is not
diminished. The photographs that portray Christian myths,
such as the expulsion from paradise or the conversion of
Mary Magdalene, allude to the transformations associated
with punishment or forgiveness. Judaeo-Christian tradition
has given form to this specific perversion that connects
blame with the disobedience of the laws of the Father. Pilar
Albarracín looks for a way out of this dialectic,
a cure that will ease the constant tension between these
two poles. She achieves it primarily through heterodox laughter,
though she is also capable of transmitting the most devastating
repugnance in works like Passion Depending on How you Look
at it (La pasión según se mire), 2001, or
Pity (La piedad), 2001, which deal with rape. In this way,
her visions connect with a tradition of Spanish criticism
and its echos of Valle Inclán’s esperpento
(theatre of the grotesque or macabre) or in the positions
illustrated by a Goya who would have looked favourably on
women’s liberation. Her taste for excesses and contrasts
borders on the baroque, and her passion for what is kitsch
connects with Pop. She is thus part of a creative movement
that questions the puritanism of the Anglo-Saxon mainstream
and is in favour of the validation of the extravagant poets,
of erotic “coming out” as Bataille once said.
Analysing the images created in art or popular culture
dissolves the patriarchal design that imprisons women in
castrating moulds. Her art is a full testimony that women
exist as subjects of enunciation (whether Lacan likes it
or not). However, what makes Pilar Albarracín a phenomenon
(not to say a miracle) is her excess of generosity and courage,
as well as her tenacity and the fact that she is extremely
demanding with herself. That and her courage to go out and
grab the bull by the horns, or the tail, as the situation
requires.
Rosa Martínez
