Film Review A new documentary traces Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s decades-long practice of spotlighting marginal, unpaid, and feminine labor. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, "Touch Sanitation Performance" (1979–80) (© Mierle Laderman Ukeles; photo Robin Holland, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, NY) It feels appropriate that Mierle Laderman Ukeles operated mostly beneath the notice of the general public for decades. As a “maintenance artist,” she focused on marginal labor, such as the upkeep of public spaces or the unpaid maternal and feminine labor that for a long time wasn’t thought of as proper work, and sometimes still isn’t. In 2017, 40 years after she became artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, Ukeles received her first career retrospective at the Queens Museum, which brought her wider attention. Now, the documentary Maintenance Artist (2025) has hit theaters, offering an easily digestible biography to spread the word about Ukeles.…