Nationality American | Name Tina Girouard | |
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Born 1946 DeQuincy, LA Known for Video and Performance Art Education Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Louisiana at Lafayette | ||
Tina Girouard (born 1946, DeQuincy, Louisiana) is an American video and performance artist best known for her work and involvement in the SoHo art scene of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Life and work
Girouard studied art at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, graduating with a BFA in 1968. When she moved to New York, Girouard befriended other Louisiana-born artists, including Lynda Benglis, Dickie Landry, and Keith Sonnier. Their work helped establish New York's post-minimalist scene. Although not as widely recognized as some of her contemporaries, she was "an early founding participant of 112 Greene St., FOOD, the Clocktower and PS1, Creative Time, Performance Art and the Fabric Workshop" and "In addition to her own projects she was involved in films, videos and performances by Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, Laurie Anderson and the Natural History of the American Dancer, among others". Girouard worked as a designer with the New York theater group, Mabou Mines, in the seventies on several productions including The Red Horse Animation and The B. Beaver Animation. Along with Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark, Girouard was one of the founders of FOOD, an artist-run restaurant in New York that combined culinary arts with other visual and performance art practices. At FOOD, the acts of cooking and eating were seen as performances.
For her contribution to the 1981 exhibition Other Realities: Installations for Performance at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Girouard lead a ten-day workshop with local students and then turned material generated during the workshop into the basis for a performance. The remnants of the performance, including costumes, sets, and props, were then exhibited as an installation. Girouard's work was featured in a solo exhibition curated by Susan Rothenberg at CUE Art Foundation in 2004. More recently it was shown as part of 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970-1974) curated by Jessamyn Fiore at David Zwirner Gallery in New York in 2011, and included in the related publication of the same title. Fiore also curated Gordon Matta-Clark, Suzanne Harris, and Tina Girouard: The 112 Greene Street Years Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago in 2013.
In 2013 Girouard participated in the tribute to FOOD organized by Frieze New York.
