The philosopher Michael Kelly thinks of aesthetics as ‘critical thinking about the affective, cognitive, moral, political, technological, and other historical conditions constitutive of the production, experience, and judgement of art.’ Aesthetics, then, should be regarded as more than questions of beauty, sublimity, autonomy, intentionality, expression, meaning, etc. With regard to projects of art, aesthetics may also invigorate ethical and political issues, the uncanny or the abject, the nature-based or site-specific, the processual or relational, or the like.

Unstable Categories of Art and People by Svein Aamold; introduction to Sami Art and Aesthetics, Aarhus University Press, 2017