Documentary 'Maintenance Artist' Spotlights Mierle Laderman Ukeles

The documentary 'Maintenance Artist' (2025), directed by Toby Perl Freilich, has been released in theaters, offering a biography of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who coined the term 'maintenance artist' in her 1969 'CARE' manifesto. Ukeles, artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1977, focuses on marginal labor such as upkeep of public spaces and unpaid maternal work. The film covers her 2017 retrospective at the Queens Museum, her references to Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, and her critique of gendered expectations in art. Ukeles notes that Pop art and Minimalism were 'infected by maintenance' but did not acknowledge it, citing Richard Serra's sculptures as an example. The documentary highlights works like 'I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day' (1976), a mosaic of 700 Polaroids of maintenance workers, and 'Touch Sanitation Performance' (1980). The film primarily focuses on Ukeles's New York City work, omitting her activities in Jerusalem, where she teaches at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and signed a 2023 open letter criticizing the art world's response to the October 7 attack. 'Maintenance Artist' is screening across the United States through October 22.