Maine Jewish Film Festival: Maintenance Artist

Directed by Toby Perl Freilich. 95 minutes. Not Rated. In English. Maintenance Artist is the first feature documentary about Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the New York City Sanitation Department’s official artist-in-residence. After she became a mother, Mierle Laderman 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 1960s avant-garde, Ukeles began to scale up her “maintenance revolution,” collaborating with the invisible class of workers who maintain museums and galleries. In 1977 she radically reframed public art by becoming the first artist-in-residence at NYC’s Sanitation Department. Maintenance Artist tells the story of an unsalaried public artist who raised maintenance to an art form and became a revolutionary force in contemporary art.