№ 3(52) 2023: Creativity of Outsiders: from the Margins to the “Archives of Culture”
Guest Editor:
Anna A. Suvorova
Professor, Dr.Sc., Herzen State Pedagogical University
Characteristics and concepts referring to the phenomenon of marginality and outsidership in culture usually had negative connotations. In scientific discourse, the categories of “outsider”, “marginal”, “marginality” often coexist with the concepts of “deviance”. In the context of postmodern culture, outsidership and marginality (marginalis –“located on an edge, on a border”) become one of the defining characteristics of the contemporary artistic process. The collapse of cultural values, rhizomatic and chaotic character, non-linearity of culture cause a change in boundaries of normativity and, moreover, an existence of “center” and “marginals” in Art be questioned. The problematization and actualization of marginalities in Art leads to inversion of the phenomena of the marginality, they move into the legitimate stable fields of culture. The rethinking of the phenomenon of marginality and outsidership begun in Philosophy, Sociology, Art Theory and art practices of in the first half of the 20th century in studies of Georg Simmel, Martin Heidegger, Robert Park, and in Avant-Garde moviments. In the XX –early XXI century, expansively grows interest in various phenomena of non-professional creativity –Naive Art, Primitive, Amateur art, self-taught art, creativity of neurodivergent people, Outsider Art, Art Brut, grassroots and visionary environment. The legitimization of the strategies and aesthetic languages of Outsider Art follow to the transformation of culture, the acceptance of borderlines and marginality of different phenomena of social life and personal paths. The creativity of Outsiders becomes a part of global artistic process, and their artworks appear in the collections of world museums and ambitious exhibitions.
The following questions will be considered in the issue:
- the phenomenon of outsidership and marginality in culture: a problem of demarcation and semantic characteristics;
- marginality and liminality as concepts of a creative person;
- philosophical, sociological, gender optics in studies of Outsider Art;
- Visionary Art, Art Brut, art of the mentally ill, Outsider Art, grassroots and visionary environment in a historical perspective;
- performative practices, literature and other forms of Outsider Art;
- transformation of Outsider Art at present;
- legitimization, institutionalization and museumification of Outsider Art;
- exhibition’s strategies and practices of Outsider Art’ representation.
Deadline:September 1, 2023.
