top of page

A Note on studying Mierle Laderman Ukeles

I first heard about her in class. What I recall is this image of her spilling water on the steps of a museum. We talked about an artist's collective that cleaned to explore the ritualistic aspect of maintenance and its ability to challenge productivity and value in a capitalistic system. Yeah. 

The image. How it resonates with me. The neutral, focused expression. The act of cleaning as art indicated something that had been simmering in the back of my head for months, maybe even years. The thing about maintenance is that it reignites personal memories for everyone. Childhood memories, things their parents taught them, an old habit, a coping mechanism. 

Ukeles re-transcribes daily experiences (not only hers, other people's too) into image-words and photographs. Her work highlights the dull moments, the repetitive habits, the mind-numbing and soul-killing everyday. It takes me four hours to clean my house the way I like to. I sink my hands into a soapy rag and lather its content on an old wooden floor. I go for the creases and remove the dust accumulated throughout the week, carefully, tediously. De-dust. Time never went here. It's clean, new, pure. Without protective gloves, I scrub my shower window with a pink sponge and scour cream. That lemony chemical sent. I'm in control. I dab the faucets with vinegar. I think of my mother. When I first read Ukeles' manifesto, I immediately realised the pleasure I took from deep cleaning my apartment while thinking about my research. Doing the dishes in the middle of writing a paper is soothing, meditation-like. Vacuuming under my bed and cleaning out my fridge feels like heaven on dark days. 

I am trying to think about other artists that managed to merge so successfully "art" and "life". With her, those two categories are redundant, useless.

One thing that emanates clearly from her work is relatability. She captures how it feels to be cleaning, to be cooking, to be caring. We don't clean the same way everywhere. We use dark soap and a lot of water to scrub the floors with stiff brushes in Morocco. I can't imagine performing that in my flat in London. Women and men go to hammams every week, where I come from. I think of steam rooms while sitting on the white porcelain. With a Kessah glove and dark soap, I scrub the dead skin off my leg. 

Cleaning, cooking, caring: it isn't really neutral. Maybe it's linked to class or habitus. It's a way to separate people, to show who the developed and dirty ones are. It can be a symbol of empowerment. We take pride in the maintenance at home. To me, the maintenance is a cultural battlefield. How can I revel in the ritual of maintenance if I can't spill over a bucket of water on the floor to clean it? If I don't go in the Eucalyptus scented steam rooms? I do not help my mother shell greens beans or let the saffron perfumed meal simmer for hours in a large pan. Instead, the maintenance I do here, in Europe, starts taking time, starts feeling like a loss, a run. I understand now what universal maintenance feels like (read western.): 

Everyone knows the smell of cleaning soap, the feel of a sponge on a dampened hand. The noise of the vacuum cleaner or the broom going over a surface again and again. The sound of your shoes or the feel of your bare feet on a floor. Cooking. Sensing the consistency of a mushroom, an onion, or a clove of garlic while chopping. Make your bed every morning. Open the window and pull the curtains right after waking up. Side note, maintenance doesn't mean care. Remember, wash your own body, or your face, or your feet or your ears. And then your teeth, if you just had breakfast, and brush your hair if they are long enough. And check your nails. Find clothes to get dressed, put on your shoes and make sure you close the door right behind you because taking care of your property is an act of maintenance too. And then you'll have to make sure that you drank enough water, that you are eating correctly, or enough at least. That the stain you got on your cheek, or your shirt is cleaned out, or not too visible. And you'll put in the recycling bin the cardboard box in which you ate your sandwich or your salad. With a pinch of regret, you'll throw away the plastic wrap. Once you get home, you make sure there's no pollution on your face. You wash vigorously, hoping it'll get it out.

It's all maintenance. Your body, your house, your clothes. Everything that belongs to you is your own responsibility and must be kept by you. Erase time. Erase use. Erase it all. 

Then there's the city. People are vacuuming your cigarettes right after you toss them (counter-maintenance). Other people repair the broken public light next to your supermarket. Gas checks in the neighbourhood, drilling the pavement to verify god-knows-what, the trash bins are emptied every week. Sometimes, from your bed, you hear glass breaking. But you don't have to remember all of that; those won't be the most memorable moments of your day. You'll just remember the conversations you've had while cooking, the thoughts that came through your brain in the shower, or when doing the dishes. Maybe those will simply be blank moments. Non-important. Empty. 

And that's why when you saw Ukeles' picture, her cleaning a pavement in front of an art gallery, you thought it was magical. How your life turned out to be a piece of art. She weaved in, rehabilitated memory where time had brought holes.

bottom of page