The article asks how contemporary art has tried to open itself up to an expanded sense of the living world’s direct capacity for thought, meaning making and future oriented action, beyond human signification or artistic intention. This trajectory intersects with one of the key tenets of posthumanist theory: that the modern human claim to have privileged semiotic powers is both unfounded and central to a species exceptionalism whose consequences now threaten all planetary life. By bringing together the aesthetic theory of Theodor Adorno, the biopolitics of Giorgio Agamben and posthumanist anthropology of Eduardo Kohn, the article moves both historically and schematically through this Anthropocenic dilemma – from the neo-avantgarde works of Ana Mendieta and Joseph Beuys to the post-internet art of Cécile B. Evans and Joey Holder. It explores the impacts of post-humanist thought for art both in its overt thematization as well as its ontological consequences. The article argues that posthumanist principles confront art with the prospect either of abandoning its autonomous production of meaning (semblance), or otherwise failing in its attempts to open art to a wider semiotic world.