CRISTINE BRACHE

Early Years

Cristine Brache was born in Miami in 1984 to Puerto Rican and Cuban parents. She started writing poetry in fifth grade, although admits she “didn’t start taking it that seriously” until she was 17 and trying to get published. She was influenced by Rene Ricard’s book of poems God with Revolver. Brache says she got into video art during high school but she only began to see herself as an artist when she made a sculpture for a friend. She gained her BFA at Florida State University then travelled to London, Thailand and China (she gained her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Arts in London). Brache married Canadian artist and writer Brad Phillips in 2016 and lives and works in Toronto.

Artworks

Cristine Brache explores ideas of codification in order to adapt and survive in oppressive environments. This codification might manifest itself through the ways female emotion and oppression are considered, as symptoms of gaslighting, or indeed via surrealism. She considers how different versions of “womanhood” are given to women or worn as a mask. Early works considered the shrines that populated the yards in her childhood neighbourhoods in Miami, and a later focus is Dorothy Stratten, the late Playboy bunny, poet and aspiring actress—Brache believes that Stratten hasn’t been appropriately honoured because her biography and biopic were shaped by male agendas.

Brache uses encaustic techniques in her painting, combining hot wax and pigment to give her works “a vintage, oneiric haze”: faces and bodies blur into the idea of a memory rather than a photograph.

• The Bunny Series (2026) is a key example of Brache’s encaustic technique, focusing on the ears and tails of the iconic Playboy bunny costume while blurring the faces of the women wearing them, asking us to consider how the models were viewed as props rather than humans.
• From the same exhibition, Dorothy Diptych (2025) is clearly inspired by Warhol’s Marlyn Monroe portraits, featuring close-up, painted reproductions of Dorothy Stratten’s face, again presenting the idea that Stratten’s story was always presented from a male point of view.
• 2019’s Be Brave was an installation that formed part of a solo exhibition exploring the front-yard shrines of Brache’s childhood neighbourhoods. Brache considered the idea of coded, self-made worship, centring on Orishas (saints) and offerings for them. Be Brave features a porcelain sculpture of the Orisha mounted on cinder blocks alongside faux candles and magic 8 balls.

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Centerfolds, Bernheim Gallery townhouse (2026)
• Dorothy’s Dream (booth exhibition), NADA Miami (2023)
• Commit me; Commit to me (Cázame; Cásame) , Fierman, NYC (2020)
• Cristine’s Secret Garden, Locust Projects, Miami (2019)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Life Imitates Art, Anthony Gallery, Chicago (2026)
• Search for Tomorrow, Bernheim Gallery, Zurich (2025–2026)

Further reading

• Conversation in Ocula about Brache’s 2026 Centerfolds exhibition
• Cristine Brache’s Instagram
• Cristine Brache’s website
• Interview from 2024 in The Creative Independent
• Article from Wallpaper about the Centerfolds exhibiton (2026)

Cristine Brache FAQs

Ocula