Since 1977, Mierle Laderman Ukeles has been the artist-in-residence of the City of New York Department of Sanitation. Her artwork, blurring/crashing boundaries between labor and performance, system and spirit, unveils connections between feminism, work and workers, the city, and the environment.

Key works include: Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition “Care;” I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day; Touch Sanitation; The Social Mirror; Ceremonial Arch Honoring Service Workers; Snow Workers’ Ballet, Echigo Tsumari; Unburning Freedom Hall; and Landing at Freshkills Park (in process).

Ukeles believes art creates freedom and challenges us to design modes of survival—for a thriving planet, not an entropic one—that don’t crush our personal and civic freedom and silence the individual’s voice.

In 2016-2017, Ukeles had a museum wide career survey exhibition at the Queens Museum, N.Y. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, N.Y.; MoMA PS1, N.Y.; Museum of Contemporary Art, L.A.; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Armory Art Show; Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Wellcome Collection, London; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Art Institute of Chicago; the Istanbul Biennial; Marabouparken Konsthall, Stockholm; Kunstverein Graz, Austria; Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg; Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford.

Her works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney, Guggenheim and Jewish Museums, N.Y.; the Art Institute of Chicago (promised gift); Migros Museum, Zurich; Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum, Hartford; and Smith College Museum, Northampton.

A selection of awards presented to the artist includes grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the N.Y. State Council on the Arts; the 2019 Francis J. Greenburger Award; fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim, Andy Warhol, and Joan Mitchell Foundations. She is represented by Ronald Feldman Gallery, N.Y.C.

Ukeles received honorary doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Maine College of Art, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.