Abstract

Many works of art today evoke issues of climate change. In this article, I want to highlight the emergence of a new kind of aesthetics in the wake of climate change, an aesthetics that merges culture, nature, history, science, activism and affects: an aesthetics of cold. With regards to the subject matter, cold, a comparison is made between images of cold from the 17th century, with its distinct paraphernalia and iconography, and contemporary works on the encounter with cold. Climate art grapples with climate phenomena at a wholistic and physical level: operating through sensations and integral forms of experience. As such, it is situated in an expanding field where aesthetics can be considered not only through its subject matter but also through its practices and its effects. Philosophical aesthetics may grasp such an expanding field through new perspectives and concepts.