Pilar Gutierrez: Tarareo Mientras Tartamudeo

Abstract

In the context of descending from dislocated Spanish Civil War refugees, Pilar Gutierrez has inherited an obsessive and mythologized Spanish identity despite coming from anarchist Catalan roots. Tarareo mientras tartamudeo (I Hum While I Stutter), which also works in reverse as Tartamudeo mientras tarareo, reflects the gaps and intersections between constructed identity, generational trauma, nationalism, and nostalgia. To hum while stuttering is to find hope and resilience amidst difficulty, perhaps a stuttering and a struggle to move on. On the other hand, to stutter while humming suggests resistance to an imposed national identity.

Song becomes the central element of play appearing in ritual constructions of identity. For Avi (grandfather), who had Alzheimer’s, and Gutierrez, old nationalistic Spanish songs were a bonding and often emotional experience. Songs were perfect for spreading a unified, homogenous national identity through Spanish cinema during Franco’s fascist regime. The 1960s song La Tarara (a derivative of an earlier flamenco song) activates a Spanish identity but also a gendered one, recalling how the female body was used both in fascist propaganda and post-regime liberation, as seen in the destape period.

The performance pieces and characters La Tarara, El Tatarabuelo, Una Tarada, Tarraco, and El Ta ra ra, fill the exhibition space, becoming a madness of icons and syllables. Memories reduced to mere symbols, nostalgia, they become a container for identity across generations, though often agglomerated and distorted.

This exhibition is funded in part by the B.F.A. Creative Research Funding.

Biography