Art, Labor, and the Printed Image
- Apr 8
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
April 7, 2026
On April 4, 2026, we began an eight-week intensive printmaking workshop with members of the Domestic and Care Workers' Union. This workshop ZRUNVA is led by American artist and professor, Ernest A. Bryant III.
The course aims to expand access to aesthetic discourse and participation in art-making for those who do not have access to formal education in academic institutions.
The idea for the course was developed through dialogue with members of the Domestic and Care Workers’ Union. The union often uses art and artistic processes as a way to explore and articulate shared class interests among its members. Three years ago, an exhibition of domestic workers’ works was held in Tbilisi for the first time, titled “Invisible Labor – Invisible Art.”
During the workshop, participants will be introduced to visual literacy through art and artifacts from world history. Visual literacy is the ability to read, interpret, and create images with intention and critical awareness; it is about making meaning from visual content rather than simply consuming it. The workshop will also cover the topics of image composition, image-decomposition, relief printmaking and intaglio printmaking.
The workshop was conceived of, and is led by Ernest A. Bryant III. Ernest is an artist and critic with a background in interdisciplinary art. He is the recipient of a BFA from The Minneapolis College of Art & Design; one MFA from Yale University, School of Art, where he focused on critical theory, new media, and printmaking; and a second MFA in Art Writing & Criticism from the New York School of Visual Arts, where his focus was art and society’s relationship to nature, conservation, and homelessness. Bryant is founder and host of the online series Criticism + Value, on which experimental essays are presented, discussed, and workshopped with guests. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bryant is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Art at New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where he teaches art and art-writing/criticism. He has taught visual art across academic and community settings. His work at the intersection of artistic production and critical thought makes him a distinctive voice for a program of this kind — one committed to expanding access to advanced aesthetic discourse and participation in the making and meaning of art beyond who can afford formal study in academic institutions.
The workshop is being held for the benefit of domestic workers, women who are employed in households. The group of participants are composed of women that work as nannies, domestic helpers, caregivers for the elderly, cleaners, tutors, cooks, and other women performing domestic work, who are also members of the Domestic and Care Workers’ Union. In Georgia, domestic work is informal and unprotected. These workers do not have access to labor rights, healthcare, social protection or pension savings; most importantly, their experience of continuous, uninterrupted work leaves them with no time for rest, recovery and socialization. The workshop is an attempt to resist this difficult reality by engaging in artmaking, study and the shared joy of creation.
The workshop guides participants through a range of printmaking techniques — frottage, linocut, and intaglio — situating each method within a broader inquiry into how images have been made, circulated, and understood across time. Participants explore not only the mechanics of each medium but the ideas embedded within them: questions of labor, material, authorship, and the relationship between skill and expression.
Among the techniques at the workshop's center is linocut, a form of relief printing that emerged in the early twentieth century as an evolution of woodcut. Linoleum's softer surface makes it more yielding to the carver's hand, offering an accessible yet expressive entry point into image production. Though some early critics dismissed the material as insufficiently refined, artists including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse recognized its capacity for bold, graphic work — and their engagement helped establish it firmly within the sphere of fine art. That history is not incidental to this workshop. The linocut's journey from overlooked material to celebrated medium mirrors something of the participants' own relationship to labor and cultural recognition.
The works will be exhibited for the first time in Naples (Italy), where the Domestic and Care Workers’ Union will present artworks by migrant domestic workers as part of the Fondazione Campania dei Festival. At the festival, Ina Charkviani, co-founder of the Domestic and Care Workers’ Union, will present handmade works by migrant domestic workers living abroad and will lead a discussion on migrant labor with the participation of migrant domestic workers. Visitors will have the opportunity to encounter messages from people in Georgia engaged in similar forms of labor, expressed through artistic means.