MAINTENANCE ARTIST
A film by Toby Perl Freilich
2025, 95 minutes
2025, 95 minutes
No. 486
Documentary
Documentary
Description
After becoming a mother disrupted her career as an artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles published a daring manifesto: from now on, all her acts of childcare and household maintenance would be performance art. The Manifesto propelled Ukeles into the 1960’s avant-garde, a largely male scene that prized the solitary creator but scorned those who “keep the dust off the pure individual creation.”
Recognizing that this devaluation of care was systemic, Ukeles began scaling up her maintenance revolution to include collaborations with the often invisible cleaners and guards who care for museums — poking at the concealed hierarchies embedded in the white cube space. In 1977, in a move that would radically reframe public art, Ukeles was invited to establish an unprecedented artist-in-residency at the NYC Sanitation Department, where she championed a demeaned but essential class of workers within a vast urban system.
Set during the impassioned social and artistic upheavals of the late 20th century and using newly digitized archival footage, Maintenance Artist is the story of an artist who raised maintenance to an art form and became a force in contemporary art.
Recognizing that this devaluation of care was systemic, Ukeles began scaling up her maintenance revolution to include collaborations with the often invisible cleaners and guards who care for museums — poking at the concealed hierarchies embedded in the white cube space. In 1977, in a move that would radically reframe public art, Ukeles was invited to establish an unprecedented artist-in-residency at the NYC Sanitation Department, where she championed a demeaned but essential class of workers within a vast urban system.
Set during the impassioned social and artistic upheavals of the late 20th century and using newly digitized archival footage, Maintenance Artist is the story of an artist who raised maintenance to an art form and became a force in contemporary art.
Festivals
Official Selection, Tribeca Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, DC/DOX 2025
Official Selection, Bentonville Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, Festival do Rio 2025
Official Selection, Heartland International Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, Boston Jewish Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, Miami Jewish Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, New York Jewish Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, Hartford Jewish Film Festival 2025
Reviews
“Forty-six years after she embedded with the Sanitation Department, Ms. Ukeles’s populist convictions, her belief in the dignity of labor, her wariness of feminist art committed narrowly to liberating women from the male gaze speak with a power to the tensions between class and gender politics roiling the country right now.” — The New York Times
“One of the most anticipated films of the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Riveting and long overdue.” — Filmmaker Magazine
“A visually explosive portrait of a one-of-a-kind creative.” — NBC New York
“Maintenance Artist explores the life and art of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose iconic works challenged both classism and art world conventions.” — Cultured
“A fascinating look at an undeterred feminist and advocate for the working class who constantly defied such easy labels.” — Documentary Magazine
“A fascinating look at an undeterred feminist and advocate for the working class who constantly defied such easy labels.” — Documentary Magazine
