Threads of Rebellion: Tina Girouard’s Artful Acts of Gathering and Repair

A two-story sculpture built from abandoned odds and ends once filled Tina Girouard’s New York loft, challenging the idea that only precious materials make meaningful art. Girouard, raised in rural Louisiana, brought the ethic of mending and reuse into the heart of the avant-garde. Her installations and performances—whether sewing, cutting hair, or layering sound—transformed daily maintenance into radical creativity. Girouard’s early years in New York saw her co-founding experimental spaces like 112 Greene Street and FOOD, where artists and ideas collided. Her textile works, like the “Wallpaper and Test Pattern” series, reimagined domestic labor as both subject and medium, while her performances invited improvisation and change, never fixed in time. After a fire forced her return south, Girouard’s collaborations with Haitian sequin artists and her founding of the Festival International de Louisiane stitched together global traditions. Her art, always in motion, reveals how care and reinvention can turn the overlooked into the unforgettable. #TinaGirouard #TextileArt #PerformanceArt #Culture