Mary Kelly's Extase (1986) will be the cornerstone of What Remains, a group exhibition at The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
The exhibiton is curated by Laura Moseley, Curator of The Women’s Art Collection with editorial assistance by Elisabetta Garletti and Harriet Loffler, and will be on view from 23 September 2026 until 28 February 2027.
Extase (1986) was created during Kelly’s artist residency at Murray Edwards College (then New Hall) and Kettle’s Yard in 1985–86 and became the foundation of The Women’s Art Collection. The work forms part of Kelly's larger installation Interim (1984–89), a multipart work that, rather than presenting history or identity as complete or settled, proposes the ‘interim’ as a space of transition, uncertainty, and possibility—where meanings remain open and identities continue to be shaped.
Taking this work as its starting point, What Remains brings together works by contemporary artists working across archives, personal and collective histories, and material traces of the past. The works in this exhibition activate histories as a living resource. They invite us to consider how identities are formed, whose stories are remembered, and how art can conjure new ways of imagining the future.
