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Biographical Sketch: Mierle Ukeles
Mierle Ukeles received her Bachelor of Arts degree in History and
International Relations in 1961 from Barnard College in New York, writing
her graduation thesis on "checks and Balances in the History of
Tanganyika Territory." This training led her to conclude, early on, that
every society shapes its own space, and that the shape a society makes of
its space is its "work." Ukeles began to think of such work as a kind of
art, and to define her own "work" as an artist in terms of helping us
rethink and reshape our space as a society.
In the late 1960s, two events occurred in Ukeles' life that had a
profound effect on her career. First, she gave birth to her first child,
and the responsibilities of raising children led her to question the
polarization between life and art. Secondly, she wrote her "Manifest for
Maintenance Art," in which she defined all of her activities, all of her
"work"--as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, and as an artist--equally
"art."
Since 1970 she has been the unsalaried artist-in-residence for New York
City's Sanitation Department where she builds and orchestrates major
public projects that explore the social and ecological issues of waste
management. Her work asks the community to rethink its common disregard
of waste and its disrespect for those who work with it. Such
reexamination of our cultural space will allow her, at Fresh Kills
Landfill, for instance, literally to reshape our environment. Her
Flow City, begun in 1985 and closely tied to the Fresh Kills
project, is a walk-through installation for observing the maintenance
process that raises questions about waste removal and relocation, and the
relationship of the nation's fragile river systems to the problem.
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