Dirty Photographs: Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Touch Sanitation
at the Barbican’s RE/SISTERS exhibition
Over the past half-century, notably following the protests of 1968, artists have increasingly expanded their practice beyond the confines of the studio, and instead engaged with the public in order to address contemporary societal injustices. Participatory art can be defined as a form which requires some engagement on behalf of the public in order to be complete (Bishop 2006). The activation of communities that occurs in this form functions in opposition to the passive spectatorial gaze, consumption, individualism, and commodity objects that accompany the engagement of publics with art in this age of neoliberal globalisation (Bishop 2012). Artists also use participation art as a means for establishing more equitable cultures, as the neutralisation of the ‘artist’ position challenges traditional hierarchical divisions between artists, subjects, and the public, wherein artists are interpreted as occupying a position of pedagogical or creative mastery, subjects are interpreted as governed by artists’ parameters, and the public as mere spectators.
This essay discusses the exhibition of Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Touch Sanitation at the Barbican Gallery’s RE/SISTERS, and how this case demonstrates the sociocultural negotiations of exhibiting participatory artwork within traditional art institutions. It argues that the presentation of participatory work in art institutions challenges the historical exclusions made by such institutional spaces and introduces such work to the public. Nonetheless, the consequent commodification and spectacularisation of institutionalised participatory art is seemingly incongruous with participatory practice’s core principles, namely the emancipation of the artist-subject-audience position and the renouncement of the commodified art object. This attests to the ongoing tension between the democratic goals of participatory art and the institutional structures that seek to contain and profit from it.
Between 1977 and 1980, Mierle Laderman Ukeles undertook her vast yet humble Touch Sanitation project in partnership with the New York City Department of Sanitation. This two-phased participatory and process work aimed to draw attention to the asymmetrical socioeconomic relations of sanitation workers and the way in which their labour is ‘stigmatized, rather than embraced as a necessary component of a consumer society’ (Feldman 2008: 43). In the first phase, Hand Shake Ritual, Ukeles visited all fifty-nine sanitation districts in order to shake hands with each of the eight thousand refuse collectors, or “sanmen”, of New York City. With every handshake, she expressed her gratitude for these sanmen’s labour, individually acknowledging and thanking them for collecting waste and “keeping our city alive”. This gesture was a sort of ‘phenomenological refutation of the invisible hand of neoliberal economics’ (ibid.: 51); by replacing abstract human relations with the dirty, human touch of the hand, Ukeles both symbolises our connection to and mutual dependence on others, while denouncing the societal revulsion towards these people based solely on their occupation. Follow in Your Footsteps, the subsequent phase, saw Ukeles spend 11 months speaking to the sanmen she met during Hand Shake Ritual while accompanying them along their daily collection routes. Her meticulous documentation of their routines and conversations through photographs and recordings attests to her desire to conscientiously represent and dignify this sector of workers.
Touch Sanitation has come to be recognised through images of the young and cheerful Ukeles dressed in bright workers’ coveralls, photographed alongside the diverse group of sanmen. Despite the visual juxtaposition between the artist and the workers in the photographs, she mirrors their posture as she casually leans on graffitied garbage trucks, crouches forward to collect shiny black refuse sacks from the pavement, and sits hunched over the bar of a diner alongside them. These photographs were first featured in Maintenance City/Sanman’s Place, an exhibition at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Gallery in 1984, alongside video recordings of her conversations with the sanmen, a Duchampian installation that reproduced a sanitation locker-room, and an annotated map of New York City. At the time of writing this essay, the documentation of Ukeles’ project is being presented in RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology at Barbican Art Gallery, an extensive exhibition which aims to reveal the systemic connections between the subjugation of women and the degradation of the planet.
By making their stories visible, Ukeles’ impact is two-fold; firstly, her documentation of their quotidian actions valorises their largely disparaged yet indispensable labour, challenging the capitalist hierarchies that value output and novelty over maintenance and sustainability. The mechanical and iterative gestures of labour – typically considered devoid of creativity – are approached from a poetic perspective, becoming almost a choreography. The presentation of the documentation of this project within a well-established art institution thus alters public perceptions of what is considered legitimate artmaking, who art should represent, who takes up the artist position, and who institutional art spaces are comprised of. This enables the critical discussion, analysis, and comparison of such work as not only social work, but as art. In this sense, the presentation of Ukeles’ work at the Barbican exemplifies how ‘the creative energy of participatory practices rehumanizes, or at least de-alienates’, marginalised communities from the intentionally intimidating art institution (Bishop 2005), thereby subverting historical processes in art institutions and realising the inclusive, collaborative, and democratic goals of participatory art.
When the works of artists like Ukeles, who actively involve socially marginalised and culturally excluded communities in their practice, are presented in conventional and well-established art institutions, they objectively insert the participants into a space from which they would otherwise be systemically excluded. As Brian O’Doherty remarks in his seminal book, Inside the White Cube, the contemporary art institution is a space tainted by social, financial, and intellectual pretension that accommodates the prejudices of the upper middle class (O’Doherty 1999). The aesthetic sterility of these institutional spaces ‘create[s] the impression of egalitarian libertarianism’ (Buurman 2016: 156) and neutrality, thus enabling their dismissal of the very ‘hierarchies, exclusions, and restrictions’ (ibid.) that have persisted since their inception. By appreciating the culturally excluded community whom she addresses with Touch Sanitation, and representing this care and recognition within a traditional art institution, Ukeles’ sanmen are not only faithfully represented in this space, but also regarded as valuable in it. While this does indeed disrupt the hegemonic conventions of art institutions, to what extent does it truly serve those participating?
The display of participatory work in art institutions does bring the culturally excluded into the often-haughty orbit of art, yet it is somewhat quixotical to argue that the hierarchal divisions between subject, artist, and institution are conveniently resolved by exhibiting these groups in the gallery. The limited conditions under which participants are granted respect, dignity, and value by apparently inclusive and progressive institutions attests to the persistence of such spaces’ regimental order, composure, and elitism. If culturally marginalised groups are accepted and appreciated within art institutions only when they contribute to projects which benefit the institution by, for example, providing them with statistics of new audiences and proactive relations with the public (Beech 2008), then the display of participatory work is far from being truly inclusive. Rather, presenting participatory art which includes these communities assists their instrumentalisation by institutions, and contributes to these institutions’ exploitative performance of care and equitability, thereby contradicting the democratising goals of participatory art.
The lack of acknowledgement within the presentation of participatory art extends beyond the mere absence of appreciation for those contributing to its creation – in actuality, they are hardly recognised at all. At the Barbican Gallery’s RE/SISTERS exhibition, the accompanying text to Touch Sanitation’s documentation features only the name of its initiator, Ukeles, and none of the sanmen. Despite being the predominant contributors to the project and its display, they are relegated to an anonymous, homogenous mass. This undermines the sanmen’s role as participating producers and heightens tensions surrounding the authorship of, and consequent remuneration for, the artwork. The income generated from a participatory work, be it from the sale of reproductions, tickets, or donations, is especially disingenuous when the benefits accrue solely to the accredited artist and the hosting institution. Consequently, the categorisation and hierarchal divide between professional artist and amateur participantwhich participatory art strives to collapse are instead reinforced.
Besides, to present a physical manifestation of participatory art in an institution is to belie one of the central requirements of participatory art: the refusal of the commodification of the work, emphasising process over product as opposed to capitalism’s inclination for the contrary (Bishop 2005). Since participatory art results from ‘a self-conscious artistic critique of the cultural commodity’ and the renunciation of the ‘exploitation of art for economic and symbolic profit’ (Fraser 1997: 115), all participatory practices ideally involve action which is independent of material production and therefore cannot be transacted as a product. Presenting Ukeles’ project as a physical commodity within an institution which engages with the commercial art system – a gallery is, after all, ‘a place to sell things’ (O’Doherty 1999: 76) – essentially instrumentalises her practice for financial gain, be it through ticket sales or mechanise. This undermines the anticapitalistic and democratic motivations of participatory art, much less the care and connection shared by Ukeles and the sanmen.
Moreover, participatory art inherently forecloses the conventional notion of spectatorship, proposing a new understanding of art that transcends traditional audience dynamics (Bishop 2012), wherein everyone is a producer. By restoring and realising collective spaces of ‘shared social engagement’ (ibid: 36), participatory art aims to antidote the paralysing, alienating, and divisive condition of modern life: a Debordian “society of the spectacle”, wherein people are reduced to mere consumers, numbed and fragmented by the oppressive instrumentality of capitalism (Bishop 2012). However, when presented in an established, white-walled art institution as photographic prints, the dynamic and engaging Touch Sanitation imminently transforms into a passive spectacle itself. To distil Ukeles’ intervention to a mere series of images negates the essence of work entirely; within the institution and separated from its own context and community, the documentation of Touch Sanitation transforms into a bourgeois model of art that has been produced by the artist and consumed by the audience. This perpetuates the dichotomies of productionversus reception and performer versus audience, contradicting the fundamental objective of participatory art.
Presenting participatory art within an institution induces another kind of spectacularisation; the photographing of socially marginalised, Othered groups is considered by post-colonial scholars (Saïd, Azoulay, and Cole, to name a few) as rooted in colonialism. Exhibiting documentation of participatory art, which includes marginalised groups, within art institutions thus could be seen as perpetuating an imperialistic relationship between those who exhibit, those exhibited, and those that spectate. As Ariella Azoulay notably argues, the photograph was a technology used to institutionalise, categorise, archive, and thus ‘own’ all that they colonised, thereby facilitating the reproduction of imperial rights (Azoulay 2021). In this sense, the historic abuse of the photographic act and consequent ‘threat of violation’ (ibid.: 112) which hangs over it indicate that exhibiting images of Touch Sanitation could be seen as a cynical act of extraction. It reproduces the imperial relations and hierarchies of the history of exhibitions, wherein people were treated as colonial objects and displayed as freakish and entertaining spectacles for the curious visitor. The inattentive grouping together of the images of Touch Sanitation into the gallery’s corner risks the working-class, multiracial sanmen being perceived as merely a different and colourful element on display. Such ‘exhibiting and making exotic marginalized groups’, according to Lind (2004), contributes to ‘a form of social pornography’ which extracts, exploits, and profits from images of marginalised Others, thus recreating the very power hierarchies which participatory art condemns.
Despite its contradiction to participatory practice’s principles, exhibiting Ukeles’ otherwise ephemeral artwork within a gallery is nonetheless beneficial for the extent of the artwork’s impact on the public. The materialisation of the work within a relatively accessible space enhances both the sociocultural and pedagogical consequences of the artwork; the display of Touch Sanitation’s documentation at RE/SISTERS becomes pivotal in expanding its outreach, a sentiment shared by myself and countless others who might not have encountered the project otherwise. This act of exhibiting Touch Sanitation imparts tangible form to its inherent formlessness, and a definition to its initial undefined nature, thereby allowing those who were not present for the participatory process itself to, to a certain extent, engage with it. This experience is enhanced by the exhibition’s accompanying public programme, consisting of symposiums, reading groups, and a movement and embodiment workshops, that is provided by the Barbican. These resources and opportunities further public understanding of the work within a context of other ecologically and socially motivated projects, as well as reimbue visitors to the exhibition with the activation that is so essential to participatory art. The incongruity of visually and institutionally presenting participatory artwork is thus arguably compensated for by the discussions and education that a well-established institution such as the Barbican can foster, allowing for the creation and recreation of relations between people beyond the original parameters of a project.
The presentation of Touch Sanitation at the RE/SISTERS exhibition has highlighted the complexities of exhibiting participatory art within traditional art institutions, prompting us to consider ways in which artwork can be presented in a way which benefits the project and the public without compromising participatory practice’s fundamental qualities. Rather than adopting a cynical stance towards the hypocrisy of exhibiting participatory work, or remaining overly idealistic about the transformative potential of its display, artists, curators, and scholars should acknowledge and leverage an understanding of the inherent tensions, limitations, and conflicts in institutionally exhibiting such art. This recognition can serve as a basis for exploring alternative approaches that better realise the aspirations of participatory art, which must be investigated in and through similar exhibitions in the future. After all, as expressed by Andrea Fraser in her article ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’ (2005), ‘it’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution. It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to.’
Azoulay, A. (2021) The civil contract of photography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Beech, D. (2008) ‘Include me out!’, Art Monthly, 315, 1-4.
Bishop, C. (2005) ‘The social turn: Collaboration and its discontents’, Artforum, 44(6), 178-183.
Bishop, C. (2006) ‘Introduction//Viewers as Producers’, in Bishop, C (ed.) Participation: documents of contemporary art. London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel and MIT Press, 10-17.
Bishop, C. (2012) ‘Participation and spectacle: Where are we now?’, in Thompson, N. (ed.) Living as form: Socially engaged art from 1991-2011. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 34-45.
Buurman, N. (2016) ‘Angels in the White Cube? Rhetorics of Curatorial Innocence at dOCUMENTA (13)’, Curating in Feminist Thought, (29), 146-157.
Feldman, M. (2008) ‘Inside the sanitation system: Mierle Ukeles, urban ecology and the social circulation of garbage’, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 42-56.
Fraser, A. (1997) ‘What's intangible, transitory, mediating, participatory, and rendered in the public sphere?’, October, 80, 111-116.
Fraser, A. (2005) ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’, Artforum, 44(1), 278-283.
Lind, M. (2004) ‘Actualisation of Space: The Case of Oda Projesi’, in Doherty, C. (ed.) From Studio to Situations: Contemporary Art and the Question of Context. London: Black Dog Publishing, 109-121.
Milevska, S. (2016) ‘Infelicitous: Participatory Acts on the Neoliberal Stage’, Participate Kult. Gestal, 7, 19-30.
O’Doherty, B. (1999) Inside the White Cube: The ideology of the gallery space. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.