Touch Sanitation 1980

Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ performance, "Touch Sanitation," saw the artist shake hands with over 8,500 sanitation workers between 1979 and 1980. Ukeles, as the New York City Department of Sanitation’s artist-in-residence, sought to reframe our understanding of labor, class, and the maintenance of everyday life. Ukeles, a feminist artist, challenges the traditional art world’s focus on the new, the shocking, and the monumental. In contrast she brought attention to the repetitive, often invisible labor considered "maintenance," traditionally relegated to women and the working class. She elevates the role of sanitation workers, the majority of whom were men of color, and whose jobs were devalued and unacknowledged. The act of shaking hands is both intimate and public. It collapses the distance between the artist and the worker, and by extension, the art world and the working class. Ukeles said, “I want to make visible the work that keeps us alive.” This simple, yet powerful act of acknowledgement transforms the perception of labor and celebrates the dignity of those who keep our cities running.