Obcość jako kategoria analityczna w badaniach nad polską emigracją artystyczną

Abstract

Biographical interviews conducted among Polish émigré artists revealed several key categories.One of them is the strangeness, which turned out to be a complex and multifacetedcategory. In “mythologies” of artists the feeling of strangeness, otherness, and evenhostility of the outside world reveals itself very often and becomes part of biographyand ethos of an artist. Emigration generally exacerbates this condition. However, theemigrant experiences strangeness not only in a new place of residence, the prolongedabsence from the home country also has its own consequences. As a result, very oftenthey experience double strangeness: in their left home country and in the new place ofresidence. However, that does not mean, that feeling of strangeness connects only withsuffering. Many artists are able to take advantage of this inconvenience, finding in this statetheir matter, subject, stimulation for creative work. These artists continually derive inspirationfrom being a stranger. In the article by referring to the collected biographical dataI would like to show different trajectories of foreignness and various creative strategiesused by artists emigrants. Strangeness will be shown as a key category in the descriptionof their biographical experience but also as not entirely unambiguous category.