"I make maintenance art 1 hour a day" - Mierle Lederman Ukeles (1976)

For the performance “I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day” (1976) Ukeles collaborated with 300 hundred maintenance staff at a bank in Manhattan. She took Polaroid photographs of men and women doing routine jobs and asked them to discuss their labor as either art or work.

"Touch Sanitation" (1970-1980)

She drew attention to the maintenance of urban ecological systems in general and the use of pejorative language to represent “garbage men” in particular. Ukeles traveled sections of New York City to shake the hands of over 8500 sanitation employees or “sanmen” during a year-long performance.