Screening with closed captions on April 28 and open captions on April 29
“After the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” Maintenance Artist introduces the radical practice of trailblazing feminist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. As a young mother, she found kinship with overlooked garbage workers, which inspired her Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969! manifesto, which links maintenance work to gender, race and class. This led to her 1977 appointment as New York City’s first (and to date only) artist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation, which she still holds. Transforming unappreciated labour into art, Ukeles has devoted her career to honouring the invisible—those whose efforts sustain daily life. By turning manual labour into provocative, playful and poetic works of art, she raises urgent questions about power, visibility and who gets to be seen. Through exclusive access and rare archival materials, audiences are invited to celebrate her visionary career and enduring relevance as her work is being canonized at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. Simone Estrin