The Art of Emergency

This introduction lays out the conditions for creativity amid contemporary crises in Africa and calls for greater critical attention by both academics and aid agencies to the work of aesthetics in humanitarian interventions. The first section, “Art in Emergency,” dismantles tenacious preconceptions of creativity, intervention, and Africa. The second section, “Art for Emergency,” shows how conditions are shaped by shifts of patronage incentivized by international funding and portable NGO models that prioritize certain cultures and metrics. The third section, “Art as Emergency” spotlights conflicts, intentional and otherwise, between audiences, artists, and administrators, and details further unstable consequences of artist-NGO collaborations, such as the pervasive spread of an aesthetics of efficacy, efficiency, and urgency. The conclusion asserts that aesthetics provide a vital and incisive lens for any analysis of humanitarian intervention.