CORONA — The Department of Sanitation's only "artist-in-residence" — who has turned common chores and tasks into pieces of art — will have her work put on display this month at the Queens Museum.
"Maintenance Art" explores Mierle Laderman Ukeles' influence in shaping the public's perception of public art and the exhibition coincides with a new book that examines her performance art and pioneering style.
The show, which opens Sept. 18 and runs through February 2017, is the first comprehensive view of her work.
It's also the first time the museum has devoted all of its exhibition space to one artist, according to Laura Raicovich, its president and executive director.
"The art featured today here directly takes on issues of feminism, labor, environmental justice and so much more. As you spend time with the work, you'll really see this come to light," she said at a preview Tuesday.
"It serves as a guide star to the next generation of artists who are really looking closely at how to work in a socially-engaged way in the world.
Ukeles joined DSNY in 1977 after an art critic from the Village Voice, in a review of her "I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day" exhibit, sarcastically suggested the Sanitation Department apply for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The department had recently faced major budget cuts and Ukeles' art — at the time, a collaboration between workers who cleaned an office building where she held the show — seemed like a good fit.
Mierle Ladermen Ukeles at a preview of her exhibit at the Queens Museum. (DNAinfo/Katie Honan)
She went on to become the "Patron Saint of Sanitation," according to Vito Turso, who was just starting out at the department nearly 40 years ago when Ukeles sent along her manifesto on art.
"I didn't know anything about manifestos, but I knew one of my responsibilities... is that I had to get people to understand, recognize, appreciate more about the people who are doing very hard, dedicated work for the city of New York each and every day," Turso said.
"She has put together for the department incredible works of art."
Ukeles' ambitious "Touch Sanitation" performance piece came out of that collaboration. She spent a year meeting with the 8,500 DSNY employees to shake their hands and tell them "thank you for keeping New York City alive."
She'd meet them at 6 a.m. or midnight, at landfills or out on the street, Turso said.
"It was probably the first time, in many of these sanitation workers' careers, that anybody had actually thanked them for the difficult work that they do," he said.
"It was Mierle who brought all of that to the department."
Her Queens Museum show features her original Maintenance Art manifesto and photos from her work cleaning streets, as well as a welcome arch made out of the work gloves from more than a dozen city agencies, including DSNY, the Parks Department and the Fire Department.
On weekends, the mirrored garbage truck she made for a piece in 1983 will be parked outside.
It also coincides with the release of "Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art," which includes interviews with DSNY commissioners, essays and photos from the exhibits.
Ukeles said she was honored to have her work displayed at the Queens Museum, known around the world for its openness.
She became an artist to be "free," she said, but found it difficult to combine that freedom with her role as a mother in the 1960s.
"I discovered that heroes Jackson [Pollock], Marcel [Duchamp] and Mark [Rothko] didn’t change diapers; I fell out of their picture," she said in a statement on the work.
"I didn’t want to be two separate people — the maintenance worker and the free artist — living in one body."
This "epiphany" ended up defining the rest of her work as an artist, as she expanded it to include the everyday people who make the world work.
At Tuesday's preview, she reflected on the mirrored garbage truck, designed "so that people would see themselves captured in the job, that they're not outside, they're part of the story.
And she talked about the ceremonial arch which shows the "unceasing labor" of the thousands of workers who make the city move, in turn creating a place for art to thrive.
"If you want to have a world, this will always go on, this work, this work is never, ever going to go away."
