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For Immediate Release: February 1, 2007

MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES

THE ARMORY SHOW: PIER 94 – BOOTH 1116

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: FEBRUARY 23 – 26, 2007

Friday – Sunday: Noon to 8:00 pm. Monday: Noon to 5:00 pm

PRESS: February 13 at Noon: The Unveiling of “The Social Mirror”

The Ronald Feldman Gallery, in cooperation with the New York City Department of Sanitation, will present the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles at the gallery’s booth (1116) at Pier 94 in the 2007 Armory Show. An artist who works in the public domain, Ukeles conceptualized the term “Maintenance Art” in 1969 after child-birth, which she has applied to the home, all kinds of service work, the urban environment, and the sustenance of the earth itself. Her thirty-year-long artist-in-residency, official and unsalaried, in the Department of Sanitation was referred to in the Winter 2002-2003 Public Art Review as among the great public art works of our time.

On view will be The Social Mirror, a twelve-ton, twenty-eight-foot-long New York City sanitation truck reconfigured with mirrored glass panels that will occupy the booth. The reflecting truck is a metaphor for the interrelationship between “us” whose images get caught in the mirror and “those” who collect our garbage. A highlight of the First NYC Art Parade in 1983, The Social Mirror is a permanent, mobile public-art work that continues to be used by the Department of Sanitation for parades and other special events.

Photographs, videos, and text tracing the arc of Ukeles’ career will line the corridor between the booth’s wall and the mirrored truck, including The Manifesto for Maintenance Art (1969); documentation of domestic art actions and early performances in art institutions in the ‘70s; the ground-breaking Touch Sanitation city-wide performance with 8,500 Sanitation workers from 1977 to 1980; Unburning Freedom Hall at L.A. MOCA in 1997; and her work on the transformation of closed landfills, including Danehy Park in Cambridge, MA. As the Percent for Art Artist of Fresh Kills, the largest landfill on earth, her proposals to renew people’s connections to the site and make the power of its transformation visible have been published in the NYC Fresh Kills Park Draft Master Plan. A PBS video and a compilation of TV clips of The Social Mirror, the Ballet Mechanique, choreographed for six sanitation mechanical sweepers, and Ceremonial Sweep capture the spirit of these decades of work.

Tuesday, February 13 at Noon: The arrival and unveiling of the Social Mirror will be a special event. The truck, which is covered with a tarp to hide its mirrors for city-driving, will be driven through the vast Armory space. Once it is positioned in the footprint of the Feldman Gallery’s booth, the truck will be unveiled. A driver of distinction will be selected to drive the truck. Contact Pamela Doan at p.doan@thearmoryshow.com for press passes and other press information.

Mierle Ukeles has received multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the NY State Council on the Arts and support from the Guggenheim, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, and Anonymous Was a Woman Foundations. Forthcoming group exhibitions include WACK! Art & the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates, and Claiming Space: The American Feminist Originators at American University, Washington D.C.

The Armory Show is located at Twelfth Avenue at 55th Street, Pier 94. For more information about the exhibition contact Sarah Paulson at (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com.