- / Professions of the Giants
- / Mellita
- / Goddess Making
- / Saturday is Alright to Fight for Your Rights
ART WORKERS ITALIA is an autonomous and non-partisan association, created with the aim of giving voice to contemporary art workers in Italy. Conceived out of the political imagination of a group of workers in 2020 as an informal movement, today AWI is an association that collaborates with experts in the legal, fiscal, and administrative sectors, with research institutes and universities, with art and cultural institutions, to build ethical, contractual, and legal tools to protect art workers.
AWI cooperations with other organisations devoted to cultural work in Italy and abroad to reform the sector and make it more inclusive, sustainable, and transparent, opposing all different forms of precarity and exploitation that currently define it. AWI fights for the recognition of work and its regulation, for a fairer distribution of resources and promotes the accessibility to funds and opportunities. From a political standpoint, AWI aims to be a reference point for art workers, non-profit organisations, and public and private institutions in Italy, positioning itself as an intermediary with policymakers and institutions.
Currently, employment patterns are highly fragmented, with no standard contracts within the contemporary art sector, with significant differences across Europe. Art workers often experience marginalization and vulnerability in this context, leading to a lack of awareness of their professional roles. For the Malta Biennale 2024, AWI led two workshops to create a toolkit for fair practices tailored for art workers in Malta, to ensure a proper acknowledgment of work and safeguard art workers’ rights.