One of the most significant contemporary artists working in Spain, Pilar Albarracín was born in Aracena (Huelva), Spain, and earned a B.F.A.from the Seville University in 1993. She currently lives and works in Madrid.
Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galería Juana de Aizpuru in Madrid and Seville; Sala Montcada de la Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Reales Atarazanas de Sevilla, Spain; Filomena Soares, Lisbon.
She has been included in group shows including Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloníki, Greece; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español, Valladolid, Spain; Centre National d’Art et du Paysage de Vassivière en Limousin, France; İstanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi; Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall.
Albarracín was included in the First International Contemporary Art Biennial of Sevilla, in 2004, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art 2005 and the Venice Biennale 2005 – in Rosa Martinez’s curated section ‘Always a Little Further.’ Her work was featured in Brooklyn Museum’s Global Feminisms exhibition in 2007, curated by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin.
Rosa Martínez wrote, “Pilar Albarracín is one of the most significant artists of the contemporary Spanish scene. Her productions have focused on the analysis of dominant narratives and, specifically, on the clichés which represent Andalusian identity; not from a remote and intellectualised perspective, but through an emotional and subversive immersion in the anthropology of the everyday. Folklore and popular traditions, food rituals, religious myths, and women’s role in the distribution of power or collective festivals such as bullfighting, are critically distorted in the mirror of her reflections. Many of her works have a hypnotic rhythm which grows until it reaches a moment of ecstasy. Then the spectator suddenly awakens ‘with a revelation or a thud’ snapping them out of their intellectual and sensorial slumber and forcing them to call into question their preconceptions. In all her performances, it is Albarracín herself who personifies the female characters that transform her into a peasant, an immigrant, a battered woman, housewife, flamenco dancer or singer.”
A highly complex depiction of female-male relationships using the simplest of forms and hypnotic rhythm, I Will Dance On Your Grave was included in the 2005 Venice Biennale by Rosa Martinez. Consistently undermining dominant narratives, and positing herself as protagonist, Albarracín’s films pierce the comfort of her homeland’s populist identity politics.
Albarricin lives and works in Spain.
