This paper details the oscillation between the aesthetic and political response to the refugee crisis as seen through the eyes of the UK's emergency response committee COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) and its alternative COBRA RES. Firstly, it examines the interjection of the official COBRA Committee within the image-economy of crisis, attempting to impose itself as a sovereign-image via an interpretation of the emergency as image-event. Secondly, it details the COBRA RES project's creative response to the COBRA Committee and the aesthetics of the refugee crisis in the summer of 2015, while detailing notions of institutional critique and the issues faced when art responds to an ongoing humanitarian crisis.