MAINTENANCE ARTIST: Documentary w/ Director Q&A

Maintenance Artist (2025, 90 min, English and Japanese with English subtitles). Screening will be followed by an in-person conversation with Director Toby Perl Frielich.

This vibrant portrait chronicles the life and work of trailblazing artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, drawing from never-before-seen archival footage, Maintenance Artist offers a deeply moving meditation on care, labor, and visibility during the social and artistic upheavals of the last fifty years.

“After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” challenged artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. After she became a mother, Ukeles published a daring manifesto declaring all her acts of household maintenance, including childcare, to be performance art. As she blasted her way into the largely male late-1960s avant-garde, Ukeles began to scale up her “maintenance revolution,” collaborating with the invisible class of workers who maintain museums, galleries and public spaces. In 1977, she radically reframed public art by becoming the first official,…