INTRODUCTION For many, this year has been and continues to be a lesson in uncertainty. The pandemic reminds us that human endeavors can be easily
disrupted and that safety is conditional in the wake of such disruption. No phenomenon embodies this precariousness more than the climate
emergency, which threatens to render any semblance of stability a thing of the past.
This year alone, we saw Australia burning. Jakarta inundated. The Bay of Bengal ravaged as super cyclone Amphan made landfall. The list of disasters and potential disasters predates 2020 and will continue to
devastate populations with greater frequency and intensity. First to suffer are the vulnerable and marginalized, easily and often obscured. But all strata of society must eventually reckon with ecological breakdown.
The 11th issue of Airport Road became an invitation for student artists within NYUAD to reflect on these existential anxieties, and for us as editors to wrestle with art’s role in an increasingly insecure world.
“Solutions” to the climate emergency have typically been the province of the sciences, both natural and social. Many factions turn to economics and engineering for much needed transformations, or to international politics and climate science for the innovations that might pave the
way to a green sustainable future. Our intention is not to diminish the
importance of such fields, but to make the case that change—lasting,
radical, transformative—requires a shift in values. An introduction of new perspectives or a revision of old ones. And that is where art comes in.
The stories we tell, the images we see, can instigate or critique, reinforce or oppose actions that are taken in other disciplines. Thus, consider
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