MAINTENANCE ARTIST

“After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” challenged Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Crashing the boundary between art and action, in 1977 she became the first artist-in-residence at NYC’s Department of Sanitation, collaborating with municipal workers to inject art directly into the city’s bloodstream.

MAINTENANCE ARTIST is the first feature documentary about this trailblazing public artist and revolutionary force in contemporary art. Ukeles, inspired by Marcel Duchamp, pioneered the notion that routine maintenance – from changing diapers to picking up city trash to caring for the earth – could be acts of performance works.  With never-before-seen archival footage, MAINTENANCE ARTIST tells a stirring story of essential workers and radical contemporary art set during the social and artistic upheavals of the last half century. Penetrating, provocative, funny, and deeply moving, MAINTENANCE ARTIST fills a glaring cultural gap and heralds Ukeles’ call for a Maintenance Revolution.

2025

Official Website

Directed by Toby Perl Freilich

Produced by: Toby Perl Freilich, Judith Mizrachy

Consulting Producer: Alysa Nahmias

Written by: Toby Perl Freilich & Anne Alvergue

Edited by: Anne Alvergue

Executive Producers: Jewish Story Partners

Supported by: Wilma S. and Laurence A. Tisch Philanthropic Fund, Jewish Story Partners, Jewish Film Institute, New York State Council on the Arts, The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture

Awards & Festivals

World Premiere: Tribeca Film Festival

DC/Dox
Bentonville Film Festival