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Overview
Communion (Love Me Tender), 2025, Oil on canvas, 46 x 36 cmCentral to her practice is the re-contextualization of images drawn from her expanding personal archive, sourced from films, found photographs, and online forums.
Nicolina Morra is a painter who investigates longing as a driving force in the human experience. She graduated from Florida State University in 2025 with a BFA in studio art and an emphasis on painting. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
In her work, she recontextualises images and disrupts and imbues them with new meanings with her painting technique, often paired with hyper-realistic depictions of other objects. Her work has been featured in several exhibitions in various institutions and independent spaces in the United States, including Latitude Gallery in New York (2026), Allgorithim House, Hollywood (2025), Impossible Currency, Atlanta (2025), LeMieux galleries, New Orleans (2025) and a solo exhibition Ruby/Dakota gallery, New York (2025).
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Works
Nicolina Morra American , b. 2003
Sighting No. 1, 2026Oil on canvas20 x 23 cm
7 7/8 x 9 inCopyright The ArtistIn Nicolina Morra’s Sighting No. 1 & 2, ambiguity is the central concern of the work. The paintings present indistinct aerial phenomena that resist fixed interpretation: what appears in the...In Nicolina Morra’s Sighting No. 1 & 2, ambiguity is the central concern of the work. The paintings present indistinct aerial phenomena that resist fixed interpretation: what appears in the sky might be read as a shooting star, a UFO, a missile, or another unidentified object entirely. This deliberate uncertainty places the viewer in a state of interpretive suspension, where meaning is constantly suggested but never confirmed.
A key device in these works is the use of red circles, functioning as so-called “operational images.” Rather than clarifying what is being seen, these marks mimic evidentiary annotation, as if pointing to something significant or classified. Yet the images ultimately withhold any definitive content or “important” event. In doing so, they produce a paradoxical effect: the viewer is confronted with visual cues that imply proof or presence, while simultaneously being left with absence, an unresolved tension that generates expectation, doubt, and a lingering belief that something is there, just out of reach.
Provenance
Artist's studioBiography
Portrait of Nicolina MorraEDUCATION
2025
Bachelor’s in Fine Arts, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025
- Ruby/Dakota gallery, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026
- Enari gallery, Amsterdam, NL, "Sweet Surrender"
2025
- The New York Academy of Art, New York, NY, “The AXA Art Prize US Exhibition”
- Impossible Currency, Atlanta, GA, “Blue Blue Blue Blue Blue”
- LeMieux Galleries, New Orleans, LA, “So Real”
- Working Method Contemporary, Tallahassee, FL, “Everything I’ve Ever Known”
- Point Blank, Chicago, IL, “Slipcover”
- Venvi Art Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, “Locust Technician”
- Bascom Centre for the Visual Arts, Highlands, NC, “Emergence”
- Field Projects, New York, NY, “Echo Locator”
2024
- Art Centre Sarasota, Sarasota, FL, “Trompe L’oeil”
- Jag Gallery, Key West, FL, “Small Works”
- Phyllis Straus Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, “Reserves”
- La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, “Everything But the Kitchen Sink”
- Thomasville Centre for the Arts, Thomasville, GA, “THOM Collective”
- Gadsden Arts Centre & Museum, Quincy, FL, “Bite From the Apple”
2023
- William Johnston Building Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, “Paracosm”
- Phyllis Straus Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, “Flowing Substances”
2022
- Phyllis Straus Gallery, Tallahassee, FL, “Art From the Home”
AWARDS & HONORS
2025
- AXA Art Prize Finalist
- Honors, Scholars, & Fellows Excellence in Visual Arts Award
- Career Preparation in the Arts Fund Scholarship
2024
- Mary Brown Ostlund Award
- Bess H. Ward Honors Thesis Award
- IDEA Grant Undergraduate Research Award
PRESS
2025
- Serena Hanzhi Wang, “Precise, Controlled Weirdness at Ruby/Dakota”, Cultbytes
Karla Menendez, “This Is the One With Magic”, Primary Colors Substack
ExhibitionsContact FormSend me more information on Nicolina Morra
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