Hot Coffee with curators Dr.Andrea Andersson and Manuela Moscoso on Tina Girouard exhibition at the Center of Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA)
Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN on view through January 12 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. When you enter the space, you feel transported into a dimension where a powerful brain, heart, and eye are all at work. Two curators of the show, Dr.Andrea Andersson from the Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, and Manuela Moscoso, CARA’s Executive and Artistic Director. answered several questions on this relevant examination of Girouard’s films, performances, drawings, sequins, textiles, and installations and how they stand up to the present. Dr. Jordan Amirkhani from the Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought has also contributed to the curatorial vision of this exhibition.
Nina: Imagine you are in your favorite coffee or tea spot. Where is it? What are you drinking? What are the three things you see right now?
Andrea: I am at Pond Coffee in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, a few blocks from the Rivers Residence. I am always drinking a cappuccino. Every day here I see the faces of artists and community friends who sustain the cultural work of this city. And on the walls, I see a print we made from artist Helen Cammock’s show, which they let us pin to their wall to support the work.
Manuela: It is early in the morning in my apartment in Brooklyn. I am in my pajamas, having my first coffee with the day ahead of me. I see the preciousness of my everyday life, the things that I know, the things that make me feel good.
Installation view of Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York, 2024. Photo by Kris Graves. Tina Girouard Art © The Estate of Tina Girouard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Nina: Please tell me more about Tina Girouard. SIGN-IN the show you are co-curating at CARA in New York. What prompted this exhibition now, and how is Girouard's experimental practice, which transcends video, photography, installations, and performance, relevant today?
Andrea: I can only say that it is never too late to honor a practice that both forged and changed art communities from New York to Louisiana and Haiti. Girouard’s practice of “maintenance”, which locates the dynamism and discovery not only in the invention of work and communities but in the labor to sustain and animate them, is perpetually revelatory. In terms of relevance, Girouard never tired of an old dress or a found pattern; she gave it new meaning again and again.
Manuela: This exhibition emerged through conversations with our friends from Rivers Institute––an artist-centric organization that we admire for their slower processes and collaborative ways of working. There are many resonances between Rivers and CARA.
Girouard's practice invites new contexts, new readings every day. Its relevance is ever-evolving. As many of her peers and friends age, I think it's important to note that the making of this exhibition has encouraged the exchange of knowledges and histories among artist-collaborators of her generation––something that may not be possible in a decade.
Installation view of Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York, 2024. Photo by Kris Graves. Tina Girouard Art © The Estate of Tina Girouard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Nina: Could you pick one work currently on view and zero in on it? What is it called? What larger story about feminist art does it tell?
Andrea: There is an untitled tin work on view at CARA. Oversized and majestic, its geometry is rendered by simple folds of commercial ceiling tin that was widely available for purchase and interior decoration in the 1970s. Closer inspection of the piece reveals both rust and the plastic remainder of bubble wrap that had protected the piece over years of neglect in the Louisiana heat and humidity. The work had been stored in Girouard’s unconditioned home in Cecilia, Louisiana for about forty years until it was retrieved to hang in this exhibition.
Girouard demonstrated a feminist impulse for duality. The embrace of her independence drove her to pick up new tools, learn new methods, and travel to new environments, but her capacity for deep collaboration was dependent on trust, mutual support, and an embrace of role-changes. She began her tin works just as she prepared to depart New York and return home to Louisiana. As such, they are markers of this dual capacity – to depart and to return, to be independent, and to build community. Their neglect also speaks to the world’s fear of that kind of mutability.
Manuela: Moving House, 1979. It's very daring to move a house from one plot of land to another. It speaks to Girouard's commitment to finding belonging, to integrating her work and life with fluidity, to imagining performances on a large scale. The way it's documented also illustrates her sensitive and considered approach to image-making and documentation throughout her practice. She is continually thinking about both the performance and the afterimage.
Installation view of Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN at the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York, 2024. Photo by Kris Graves. Tina Girouard Art © The Estate of Tina Girouard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Nina: In addition to being curators you are both active academics and educators - how does this academic background inform your exhibitions?
Andrea: What I gained most from academia and my experience as both a student and a teacher was….time. Time changes our encounters with art, our engagement with ideas, and our relationships with other people. I think one of the most remarkable qualities of Tina Girouard’s practice is the fact that she sustained a line of inquiry across decades. And we see that sustained attention results in relationships that survive all of life’s changes. At Rivers, we feel so fortunate to have found and taken time with our colleagues at CARA in the development of this work. In that time, we tested ideas and changed our minds and found new points of relationships. And it is a quality of attention that I think our communities share.
Manuela: I am interested in engaging with art and artists from new perspectives––and in a deep way–– but our exhibitions are informed by curiosities and intellectual rigor more than any specific academic training.
Film still from Tina Girouard’s Maintenance II: Take Two, Role Change, 1973. Photo by Richard “Dickie” Landry. © Courtesy of Richard Landry and the Estate of Tina Girouard.
