Maria Cornejo

Photo by Mark Borthwick

text by SABINE HELLER 
photo by MARK BORTHWICK 

 

Maria cornejo has been an outsider for as long as she can remember. Exiled from Pinochet’s Chile at the age of 11, she was sent to Peru to squat in a church with other refugees before gaining political asylum in Manchester, England, where her mother died two years later. Her life there was so harsh she was often forced to scrounge in bins for clothing, and she endured almost total alienation because she didn’t speak English. “I drew strength from these experiences,” she recalls. “Being an outsider gives you conviction. I didn’t want to be like everybody else.”

When Maria was old enough to escape, she fled to the punk-crazed city of London. She started hanging out in clubs and in creative circles, where she was quickly noticed for her South…