Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN
May 21, 2025–September 14, 2025
Tina Girouard, from the live performance, Pinwheel, 1977. Commissioned for the exhibition “Five From Louisiana,” at the New Orleans Museum of Art, 1977. Image courtesy of the Estate of Tina Girouard, Artists Rights Society, (ARS), New York

at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, MX.

SIGN-IN is the first comprehensive retrospective for the Louisiana-born artist, Tina Girouard (1946-2020). Moving between genres and geographies, Girouard invested objecthood with meaning through ritual, performance, role-playing, and community participation. From the 1970s until her death, Girouard played a galvanizing role in the founding and development of communities and organizations, including the Anarchitecture Group, the interdisciplinary cohort of 112 Greene Street, FOOD restaurant, The Kitchen, P.S. 1, the Festival International de la Louisiane, and as a collaborator in artist communities in Louisiana, New York, and Haiti. Her practice indelibly shaped community-engaged, feminist, craft, textile, performance, and video art of the last century and invested New York’s avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s with ritual and vernacular knowledge of the American and global south. And yet, Girouard’s practice, has been largely erased from canonical history.

SIGN-IN presents the full arc of Girouard’s practice, articulating the artist’s lifelong inquiries into retooling materials and co-creating spaces.
Central to Girouard’s practice was the notion of “maintenance,” a process of upkeep that recognized and affirmed the spirituality of everyday objects and interactions. The artist’s habitual and ritual acts of maintenance extended to domestic labor traditionally associated with “women’s work.” For Girouard each space, whether domestic or artistic, was a site of possibility for re-imagining how to expand ideas of collectivity across art worlds.

“I like art to function as a preserve, as a refuge,” wrote Girouard. Blurring the boundaries between her public contexts and private lives, she built and maintained such temporary refuges. In the structures that Girouard created, the elements were sacred and every organization of people, materials, and signs was more than the sum of its parts.

In coordination with the exhibition, Rivers is proud to partner with Dancing Foxes Press for a long overdue publication that pairs Girouard’s archive with newly commissioned essays by Jordan Amirkhani, Andrea Andersson, Aruna D’Souza, Anaïs Duplan, Pamela M. Lee, and Lumi Tan.

This exhibition is made possible by the lead research, publication, and exhibition support of The Helis Foundation, as well as the generosity of Teiger Foundation, Every Page Foundation, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the Stolbun Family, Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham, the Azby Fund, the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Ella West Freeman Foundation, the RosaMary Foundation, and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University. Additional thanks to Nathalie Simon and Elizabeth and William Monaghan. We extend our appreciation to all of the lenders, to Anat Ebgi Gallery and Magenta Plains Gallery, and to our Board of Directors. We extend our deepest thanks to Amy Bonwell, Executor of The Estate of Tina Girouard, who has provided unending care for the artist’s practice, commitments, and legacy.

This exhibition was first on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans from March 16, 2024 to July 7, 2024. Rivers partnered with the Center for Art, Research and Alliances to present the exhibition in New York (September 20, 2024 to January 12, 2025) and again at the Museo Tamayo (May 21 to September 14, 2025).


Exhibition Views



Reviews and Press

“La experamentación estética de Tina Girouard regresa al Museo Tamayo”
By Eleane C. Herrera Montejano

La Crónica de Hoy
Published May 21, 2025

“Ritual Maintenance: Edges and Encounters with Tina Girouard”
By Diana Seohyung

MOMUS.ca
Published February 13, 2025

“The Top Ten Shows in the US in 2024”
By Cassie Packard

Frieze.com
Published December 16, 2024

“Tina Girouard”
By Julia Bryan-Wilson

4Columns.org
Published November 1, 2024

“10 New York City Shows to See in November”
By Lisa Yin Zhang

Hyperallergic.com
Published November 1, 2024

“Tina Girouard Helped Make SoHo a Scene, Now Her Legacy Emerges From Obscurity”
By Sarah Cascone

Artnet.com
Published October 21, 2024 

“Two New Shows Examine the Profundity of Artist Tina Girouard”
By Grace Edquist

Vogue.com
Published October 18, 2024

“The Stubborn Live Ethos of Tina Girouard”
By Simon Wu

Frieze
Published October 14, 2024

“Pioneering Textile Artist Tina Girouard is Finally Getting Her Due”
By Maxwell Rabb

Artsy.net
Published October 1, 2024

“Art Exhibitions That Don’t Look Away From the Rocky Realities”
By Siddhartha Mitter

The New York Times
Published September 5, 2024

“Must-See NYC Museum Exhibitions for Fall 2024”
By Chadd Scott

Forbes.com
Published September 1, 2024 

“Tina Girouard at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art”
By Lauren Stroh

Artforum
Published June 3, 2024

“Tina Girouard’s “Sign-In”
By Cat Kron

E-Flux.com
Published April 9, 2024