In these times of ours, whither art? What is the use of the defamiliarizing and the sublime amidst cataclysmic conflicts over identity and belonging, resources and institutions, climate and extinction? Understandably, many defenders of art have lately come to frame their defenses in terms of messaging: artists make art to convey messages otherwise excluded from official discourse (ideology, policy, history, social science), to testify and self-express, to achieve recognition and elicit identification. Spectators and readers in turn look to art in order to see themselves mirrored, their experience confirmed, their truth avowed.