The Making of a Maintenance Artist

"Mierle Laderman Ukeles, "Touch Sanitation Performance" (1979-80) (© Mierle Laderman Ukeles; photo Robin Holland, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY) It feels appropriate that Mierle Laderman Ukeles operated mostly beneath the notice of the general public for decades. As a "maintenance artist," she focused on marginal labor, such as the upkeep of public spaces or the unpaid maternal and feminine labor that for a long time wasn't thought of as proper work, and sometimes still isn't."

"In 2017, 40 years after she became artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, Ukeles received her first career retrospective at the Queens Museum, which brought her wider attention. Now, the documentary (2025) has hit theaters, offering an easily digestible biography to spread the word about Ukeles."

"It's opportune that the film releases so close to the Duchamp exhibition at MoMA, since his influence on Ukeles is one of the first things she references - she says he gave her "the gift of naming and renaming," or recognizing how art could be made by recontextualizing the familiar. But, as she also points out, he and her other male heroes like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock "didn't change diapers.""

"Indeed, it was during her struggle to continue working as an artist after having a baby that she drafted her 1969 "CARE" manifesto, in which she announced herself a maintenance artist. (There's a funny bit in the film wherein Ukeles recounts Lucy Lippard calling her and asking, "Are you real, or did Jack Burnham make you up?" after Burnham published excerpts of the manifesto in Artforum.)"

Mierle Laderman Ukeles developed a decades-long practice centered on maintenance work, including upkeep of public spaces and unpaid maternal and feminine labor. She became artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation and later received a first career retrospective at the Queens Museum. A 2025 documentary presents her biography and traces influences, including Marcel Duchamp’s idea of naming and renaming familiar things as art. Ukeles contrasts male art heroes with the realities of diapering and domestic labor. During her struggle to keep working after having a baby, she drafted her 1969 “CARE” manifesto, declaring herself a maintenance artist. The documentary repeatedly returns to gendered expectations for artists.

Read at Hyperallergic