A new documentary traces Mierle Laderman Ukeles\u2019s decades-long practice of spotlighting marginal, unpaid, and feminine labor. It feels appropriate that Mierle Laderman Ukeles operated mostly beneath the notice of the general public for decades. As a \u201cmaintenance artist,\u201d 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\u2019t thought of as proper work, and sometimes still isn\u2019t. 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 Maintenance Artist (2025) has hit theaters, offering an easily digestible biography to spread the word about Ukeles.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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 \u2014 she says he gave her \u201cthe gift of naming and renaming,\u201d 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 \u201cdidn\u2019t change diapers.\u201d Indeed, it was during her struggle to continue working as an artist after having a baby that she drafted her 1969 \u201cCARE\u201d manifesto, in which she announced herself a maintenance artist. (There\u2019s a funny bit in the film wherein Ukeles recounts Lucy Lippard calling her and asking, \u201cAre you real, or did Jack Burnham make you up?\u201d after Burnham published excerpts of the manifesto in Artforum.)<\/p>\n
That emphasis on gendered expectations for artists recurs throughout Ukeles\u2019s interviews. At one point, she bluntly tells director Toby Perl Freilich, \u201cIf I was a male artist, I wouldn\u2019t be making maintenance art.\u201d A significant part of her efforts goes into recognizing the discounted labor in all fields. She talks of how Pop art and Minimalism \u201cwere infected by all sorts of strains of maintenance,\u201d but did not \u201cacknowledge that whatsoever.\u201d As an example, she cites Richard Serra\u2019s monumental sculptures. They \u201ccame out of worlds of work \u2014 steel makers and shipbuilders. But who are the people? Who does this? There is only the unique artist. That\u2019s what bugged me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Performance artists tend to make for crowd-pleasing documentary subjects; there\u2019s a reason the Marina Abramovic film did so well. Solely reading about a performance piece can make your eyes glaze over. It\u2019s a form meant to be experienced, and if you can\u2019t witness it in person, then a recording can work in a pinch. The documentary mode jells particularly well with Ukeles\u2019s art because she\u2019s already investigating the minutiae of labor, so an added layer of her explaining the logistics of each piece enhances it.<\/p>\n
Take “I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day\u201d (1976), an enormous mosaic of 700 Polaroid photos taken of maintenance workers at a Financial District skyscraper. As Ukeles recounts, the Polaroids are more than an aesthetic decision \u2014 to gain the trust of the workers and reassure them that she wasn\u2019t a spy from either union or management, she took pictures via a method that would leave no secret negatives. Such efforts translate into a camaraderie that is evident across both the archival and contemporary footage, in which she and myriad municipal workers address each other on a first-name basis with an easy cordiality.<\/p>\n
While most artist documentaries glorify individuals, Maintenance Artist typically portrays Ukeles as just one actor within a broader community. That said, the film almost exclusively focuses on Ukeles\u2019s work in New York City, sidestepping that she lives partly in Jerusalem and is active in the art community there, teaching at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. (She was also a signatory of a 2023 open letter criticizing the art world for not sufficiently condemning the October 7 attack.) The documentary might help more of us consider and appreciate the maintenance communities both in the art world and in our everyday lives, and what else still goes unnoticed or under-recognized.<\/p>\n
Maintenance Artist (2025), directed by Toby Perl Freilich, is screening in venues across the United States through October 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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