Mierle Ukeles between the art and the maintenance work/ Mierle Ukeles entre a arte e o trabalho de manutencao

This article presents the work of American feminist artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles (1939), in her contestation for enabling the visibility of "maintenance" work. Throughout 40 years, Ukeles has dedicated herself to thinking art as a process that is similar to our daily lives, especially in the always repeated maintenance activities of life that sustains the societies. Since 1977, Ukeles is the resident artist in the New York City Department of Sanitation, highlighting her profound commitment to thecidty and the reproduction of collective life. In 1969, when she wrote Maintenance Art Manifesto!, a landmark in the history of feminist art, she challenges women's social role in the domesticsphere, expanding the issue of her "maintenance art" to the public space and the city. When highlighting the low social status associated to maintenance chores--the caring of children, elderly people, cleaning, cooking, washing--, the artist makes these activities public by publicizing her domestic work as well as carrying them out in the streets and art museums. Thus, the method of this article is the analysis of the image to debate Ukeles' work according to the concepts of the distribution of the sensible (RANCIERE, 2009).