CLARE TORINA
Burnaway is delighted to continue our tradition of elevating Southern artists by partnering with Sheet Cake Gallery on a solo exhibition of work by Clare Torina at NADA Miami. Come see us Tuesday, December 2nd through Saturday, December 6th, 2025 at Ice Palace Studios, Miami.
The work begins where folklore meets commerce: friendship bracelets severed from their origins of religious protest, rabbit’s feet stripped of moon mythology and Underworld rites, pearls inherited without their accumulated meaning. Torina researches how objects originate and tracks their erosion through mass production. What emerges is work that refuses the distance between viewer and subject. If you’ve carried it, worn it, inherited it—these histories implicate you.
Pockets Regina, a large-scale ink on canvas embedded with unique paintings, drawings, and objects, anchors the presentation. Secrets are sewn directly into the surface. It operates as both image and architecture, revealing new information with each encounter. The velvet paintings employ material strategy as conceptual method. Black velvet absorbs light, pulling imagery into shadow. Oil on velvet works including Sightseers, Keeper, and Cool Mom draw from Jun’iro Tanizaki’s argument in In Praise of Shadows: that dimness allows us to see what brightness obscures. Sculptural works operate through scale disruption. Grave Goods renders a pearl necklace in oil on wood. Little Legend recontextualizes paint swatches from her 125-foot jump rope installed here last year. Miniature oil paintings carry titles that refuse easy reading: Hide From God, Fat Cat, Eavesdropper, Blanket Palace.
Clare Torina (b. 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist who was raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She received her BFA from the University of Memphis in 2009 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. She has been a resident at the Skowhegan School School of Painting and Sculpture and an education fellow at the Wassaic Project. In addition to her own practice, Clare is the co-runner of Flyweight, a 1:12 scale mobile exhibition space for solo projects. Torina lives and works in New York.
Sheet Cake Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located at 405 Monroe Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. The gallery supports artists based in and connected to the regional South, and intentionally celebrates women, queer artists, and artists of color.