CEMRA: PAINting
Plaster bandage, oil, 94 × 72 cm, 2023; reworked 2025

This work consumed more than fifty rolls of plaster bandages, each wrapped and sealed with varnish to build a layered, skin-like surface. The bandage becomes both shield and scar: a material symbol of endurance, pain, and the fragile path toward healing.

The title itself — PAIN-ting — highlights pain as the central axis of the work. A year ago, I vowed abstinence from jewelry, an ascetic act of renunciation, made in hope of a wish that remains unfulfilled. This painting, the only one left without a home after my Lazaret exhibition, has since become the bearer of that offering. I gifted it my jewelry — even my grandmother’s earrings — so it might grow more beautiful, more cherished, more accepted.

Among these ornaments are Czechoslovak costume jewelry pieces, some over sixty years old, crafted in the 1950s–1970s, when production was at its peak. Today, these jewels are increasingly rare and collectible, carrying with them both memory and history.

About the Artist
CEMRA (b. 1990, Belarus) works with plaster bandages as her canvas, weaving together painting, sculpture, and installation to confront human trauma and resilience. She began painting at 15, trained at art college, and later transitioned from design to visual art in 2005. Influenced by environmental and societal concerns, she embraced veganism and minimalism, grounding her practice in ethics as well as aesthetics.

Her works, often probing the darker dimensions of human nature, have been widely exhibited in Belarus through solo shows and collaborations. By blending fragile materials with themes of endurance, her art speaks to justice, memory, and transformation.