The Others – So Who?
From cynocephali to Dracula, from Kraków’s monster to Batman – representatives of mythical breeds, terrifying freaks of nature and heroes blessed with superhuman features are set to appear at the exhibition halls of the International Cultural Centre.

Apart from chimeras and dragons, the vast majority of the monsters peopling our imaginations since time immemorial have been humanoid beings and it is these that probably always terrify us the most… What hidden human fears and obsessions are expressed by these phantasms and anomalies of nature so enthusiastically immortalised by artists for centuries?

This is already the eighth ICC exhibition presenting the collections of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and Polish Academy of Sciences Scientific Library in Kraków: we can also see over a hundred engravings by such masters as Albrecht Dürer, Václav Hollar or Jacques Callot. They are complemented by satirical drawings from the 17th century, 19th-century press illustrations, medical atlases, comics and posters from the mid-20th century and film extracts. The freak, the enemy, the intriguing misfit, the hero? Alongside the mediaeval bestarium from the pages of Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicles from 1493, we can encounter the repugnant deviants here that populated 18th-century London in William Hogarth’s picture stories. We can become acquainted with the famous midgets, giants, lion people and other characters in the freak shows that once fascinated viewers over the whole of Europe. Sometimes an anatomical anomaly opened the path to a spectacular career: an example of this is a midget who was known at all the most important royal courts at the turn of the 19th century – Józef Boruwalski. Erstwhile “misfits” such as Kaspar Hauser and Adèle Hugo were the inspiration for literary works and screen hits. In the 20th century, comic superheroes appeared in the popular imagination – in their case physical otherness gave them unusual powers.


Through these images authors of exhibition wish to speak about the history of prejudice, fear and fascination; about the history of human judgements on nature; about permanent divisions to "us" and "them". The lives of the heroes of this exhibition – freaks and misfits − have in fact been dependent on an accidental configuration of religious beliefs, political line-ups, wars, disasters and the medical knowledge. In this history, neutral interest in a curio changes into fascination with a person of unusual appearance or a lone hero hiding in the shadow, or – as easily – into repressions against a madman or the enemy. No epoch judged "them" unambiguously.