Image: Uitstalling, Genk
Uitstalling is presenting ‘Absence’, a solo exhibition by CEMRA in Genk, Belgium, from May 21 to August 29, 2026. The gallery describes the presentation as bringing together ‘Ziamliačka’, ‘Homeless’ and ‘Status Quo’, works that frame trauma, displacement and memory through tactile materials and physically marked surfaces. The exhibition is listed in the gallery’s current programming as taking place at KUBE Gallery in Genk.
According to Uitstalling, CEMRA was born in Belarus and now lives in exile in Warsaw. The gallery says her practice unfolds between control and surrender, with image, body and memory dissolving into one another. Her works use plaster bandages, resin, oil and other materials to explore fragile territories of belonging, loss and resilience. The artist’s recent trajectory is presented in direct political terms: since being forced into exile from Belarus in 2022, her work has increasingly focused on collective trauma and the scars left by political repression.
‘Absence’ is presented as an exhibition about loss, displacement and the voids that become “living witnesses.” The gallery links the project to the experience of exile and to identity shaped by political violence, using the three named works as its core. The exhibition text identifies ‘Ziamliačka’ as having recently been shown at Kunsthaus Graz in Austria, a detail that situates the work within a broader European exhibition context without expanding beyond the source material.
The works themselves are described in unusually concrete terms. In ‘Ziamliačka’, 225 kilograms of soil transported from Belarus are turned into a vessel of memory and longing. The gallery says the scent of the soil is extracted and preserved through enfleurage, a process that transforms absence into something tangible. In ‘Homeless’ and ‘Status Quo’, bound bodies, bandages, cardboard and fractured forms connect personal vulnerability with the political realities of contemporary Belarus.
One image singled out by the gallery is a national symbol placed in a wheelchair, described as a haunting metaphor for a frozen future and prolonged agony. That visual detail appears within the exhibition statement as part of the artist’s exploration of fragility, repression and endurance, and helps define the emotional register of the presentation. The emphasis throughout is on material form as a carrier of memory rather than on narrative illustration.
Uitstalling’s website presents the exhibition within its wider 2026 schedule in Genk and also lists earlier and forthcoming projects by other artists, but ‘Absence’ is the current focus. The gallery’s artist page and exhibition listings confirm CEMRA as part of its programme, and the dates for ‘Absence’ run from May 21 through August 29, 2026, in Genk.
