aalto1 untyped-item.component.html
Connecting Art, Maintenance, and Motherhood: How Ukeles’s Maintenance Art Shapes Understandings of Maintenance
Loading...
Access rights
openAccess
CC BY-NC-ND
CC BY-NC-ND
Creative Commons license
Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as openAccess
publishedVersion
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
This publication is imported from Aalto University research portal.
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Date
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
26
Series
Gender, Work and Organization, Volume 32, issue 2, pp. 544-569
Abstract
This paper proposes an alternative feminist understanding of maintenance by investigating the artistic practices and lived experiences of feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939). Our main theoretical and empirical focus lies on maintenance, and we show how art and motherhood as productive connection points proffer different ways of perceiving, understanding, and practicing maintenance. By contextualizing our case within the historical backdrop of New York between the late 1960s and 1980s, we demonstrate how Ukeles’s maintenance art proposes novel ways of perceiving the value of maintenance, from the maintenance performed by mothers to considerations of the broader societal implications of maintenance. Such alternative political understanding aligns with critiques of postfeminist societal discourse. We contend that Ukeles’s art inspires a political shift in our thinking about maintenance, where maintenance is valued not solely for its indispensable and utilitarian attributes but also its relational, emotional, and embodied qualities. This nuanced understanding requests visibility for maintenance and foregrounds ‘more-than-I’, agency, and continuity of life, thereby acknowledging the inherent value of the political dimensions of maintenance.
Description
Other note
Citation
Gulari, N, Dziuba, A & Huopalainen, A 2025, 'Connecting Art, Maintenance, and Motherhood: How Ukeles’s Maintenance Art Shapes Understandings of Maintenance', Gender, Work and Organization, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 544-569. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13169