Mierle Laderman Ukeles (born 1939) is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic “maintenance”.
Since 1977, when Mierle Laderman Ukeles became the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation—a position she still holds—she has created art that deals with the endless maintenance and service work that “keeps the city alive,” urban waste flows, recycling, ecology, urban sustainability and our power to transform degraded land and water into healthy inhabitable public places. Her art brings to life the very essence of any urban center: waste flows, recycling, sustainability, environment, people, and ecology.
She is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York.
She has been awarded several prestigious awards and fellowships including:
- Francis J. Greenburger Award, Art Omi, 2019, Charlotta Kotik, Presenter
- Public Art Dialogue Award, College Art Association, 2017
- Lily Auchincloss Foundation, 2015
- The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, 2015.
- Queens Museum Honoree, 2015.
- Ann Chamberlain Distinguished Fellow, San Francisco Art Institute, 2010.
- Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards, National Foundation for Jewish Culture, 2003.
- Anonymous was a Woman Foundation Award, 2001.
View this artist’s posts here.