“Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN” is the first comprehensive retrospective devoted to the Louisiana-born artist Tina Girouard (1946–2020) in New York City, presented at CARA in partnership with Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought.
From the 1970s until her death, Girouard was a dedicated experimental artist, collaborator, and art worker, whose practice across mediums deeply informed feminist art, craft, performance, and video of the last century. Alongside her individual creative work, she nurtured and was a part of artist communities and organizations in Louisiana, New York, and Haiti, including the Anarchitecture Group, the interdisciplinary cohort of 112 Greene Street, FOOD restaurant, The Kitchen, P.S. 1, and the Festival International de la Louisiane.
“I like art to function as a preserve, as a refuge,” wrote Girouard. Girouard’s art honored the spirituality of everyday objects and interactions. Her acts of upkeep, including domestic labor traditionally associated with “women’s work,” blurred the boundaries between what she called “lifemaking” and art-making.
“SIGN-IN” gathers film, performance, drawing, sequin, textile, and installation, all of which trace Girouard’s practice and legacy across genres and geographies. Together with archival photographs, scores, and preparatory notes, the works assembled in “SIGN-IN” articulate both Girouard’s profound contributions to the field and her belief in collaboration. Traveling as Girouard did between Lousiana and New York, “SIGN-IN” holds space for an artist’s legacy too long overlooked.
at Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York
until January 12, 2024