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'Out of place'

   26-29 June 2025 

forthcoming exhibition in the Leper Chapel, Barnwell Junction on Newmarket Road,

Cambridge CB5 8JJ.     
Installation and paintings by Maria Pesma with integrated performances by in situ:

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opening hours:

Thu & Fri: 12:00 - 17:00

Sat & Sun: 11:00 - 15:00 also

Sat & Sun: 18:00 - 20:00

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for info please call: 07477297227

email: theaterart@yahoo.gr                

   

Excerpts from an interview with Susan Quilliam about this exhibition:

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Why the title Out of Place?

- The title has multiple significances. Central is the idea that the space of the Leper Chapel was constructed for people who were placed outside society.

There is something more complex –the building itself is next to a road and railway lines from which it seems detached. It doesn't have other historic buildings to support it. So the building itself seemed to me to be out of place – it came to represent the 'out-of-place-ness' of those people suffering from leprosy and who had been exiled there.

The title also connects to my personal associations and history. Not only because I myself am a person who is in a sense out of place because I don't come from Cambridge or from England, but also because I came to Cambridge because of events which made me feel out of place in my own country.

Plus, in the installation, the title is clearly reflected by the images and 3-dimensional objects … representations of human bodies from which the actual body is absent, leaving only the skin. Something has been removed' Something is not in its place.

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Are the artistic ideas you use in the installation new ones for you?

-I have been dealing with the issues of how to present absence for decades. And I've been working with images, costume, installations, theatre design for many years. So some of this reappears in Out of Place.

The forms made out of strips of material had their beginning when, working in Athens about 15 years ago, I had the notion of constructing costumes as sculpture, not to be worn but to personify the roles the actors played. I put two or three of them alongside each other and was amazed at the effect – it looked like bodies in space.

That said, for Out of Place I also deliberately broke away from many things I was doing before. I also avoided anything which conveys a narrative and painted fragmented faces, often on an unconscious level without knowing exactly how or why. I also decided to use different materials and to use paint in different ways without aiming at a 'polished' result .

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What do you hope that we, the audience, gain from the installation?

- I certainly wanted to create an immersive experience for the audience to enter, to connect with the space.

I am not trying to communicate ideas, neither to put thoughts into words when I''m working.

But I do hope that the audience will experience some of the things I have experienced while making the installation, the unconscious stirring of something. I do hope they experience a sharing of common humanity – the installation is not just for the people who are here but also for the people who are not here.

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Why did you invite in situ: to add a performance element to your installation? What are you hoping the performance will bring to the event?

- Working with in situ: is an amazing coming-together of things. Meeting the in situ: people and their voice work just clicked for me.

I have always worked with actors, so it's not surprising that I wanted this collaboration. That said, the installation is not a set for a performance. It is instead a statement that the

images, the forms, all these people which the forms represent, have no voice. The voice is absent. They are absent. And when in situ: adds their voices, that's fascinating – for the audience and for me.

New angles and potential arise from dynamic interaction. I'm extremely grateful for this collaboration and the warmth between us as it has developed.

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