Vaida Stepanovaitė is a researcher, curator, and organizer, as well as an associate lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research examines the relationships and tensions between art, work, and labour across both institutional and self-organized contexts. She questions the notion of art as an aesthetic practice disconnected from the broader economy, and challenges the idea of labour as belonging solely to the economic sphere.

Vaida played a pivotal role in establishing the Art Workers’ Union in Lithuania in 2023. A branch of the May 1st Labor Union, the Art Workers’ Union seeks to protect workers’ rights in the field of visual arts while also reimagining “art workers” as a new, broader collective subject. In her practice-based research, Vaida highlights the unspoken hierarchies and the differential value assigned to roles in the field of art, as well as the material differences this discrepancy fosters between creative and infrastructural work.