A new feature-length documentary titled "Maintenance Artist" will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 8, chronicling the decades-long career of 86-year-old New York artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. The film, directed by Toby Perl Freilich, traces Ukeles's pioneering concept of 'maintenance art'—reclaiming everyday tasks like diaper-changing, floor-washing, and garbage-collecting as artistic acts. It covers her unpaid role as artist in residence of the New York City Department of Sanitation, her 1970s performance shaking hands with 8,500 sanitation workers, and her first major retrospective at the Queens Museum in 2016-17.
The documentary matters because it brings renewed attention to Ukeles's radical redefinition of art and labor, connecting her personal life as a mother and wife to her groundbreaking manifesto and collaborative works. By pulling back the curtain on her creative process and showing how she responded to societal issues, the film helps cement Ukeles's legacy as a revolutionary figure who challenged traditional boundaries between art, maintenance, and social engagement. It also highlights the ongoing relevance of her ideas about invisible labor and the people who keep cities running.