Nineteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper details a developing methodology using Cubism to build solidarities amongst precarious workers, centring the marginalised identities and experiences of a largely migrant workforce, returning the ‘worker’ to the centre of art making and exploring the future possibilities of art and intersectional class struggle. An interdisciplinary model developed in collaboration with Dr Vera Weghmann, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Greenwich, the United Voices of the World (UVW) and International Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) independent trade unions, the project includes documentation of campaign and strike action, worker portraits and art making workshops with union members which will culminate in a group exhibition in 2024. With the absence of artwork about, and created with, trade unions in the UK, the project aims to develop a methodology and visual legacy available to both artists and unions worldwide. A challenge to independent trade union organising, and precursor to the project, is the formation of solidarities amongst precarious workforces existing in geographical, social and cultural isolation from each other; sex workers and cleaners, care workers and security guards. Harnessing Cubism’s ability to portray the fragmentary and contradictory nature of social life, workshops explore the diverse and often disparate identities and experiences of precarious workers. Implementing Cubism as an art of construction and therefore de- and re-construction, the project aims to re-organise these fragments into the future, juxtaposing multiple perspectives simultaneously to construct new shapes, forms, solid-arities.