The symposium Perpetual Upkeep: Intersections of Art and Maintenance explores the relationship between artworks and maintenance, particularly the role of artworks in maintaining systems of power. Perpetual Upkeep investigates a variety of topics, including land, queer maintenance, nation-building, and material institutions.

 

This exhibition, in conversation with the symposium, questions the role of preservation in material culture, with a focus on the ethics of care for ephemera, cultural objects, and various traditions surrounding maintenance. The items displayed here explore the convergence of maintenance and ephemerality in traditional art practices, conservation and preservation, modern and contemporary art, and the maintenance of power structures. Special attention is given to the question of preserving objects past their intended lifespans and the labor required in maintaining the Soviet Union. 

We invite viewers to contemplate the labor, procedures, and efforts of maintenance, which are frequently disregarded or deliberately obscured. As posed by Mierle Laderman Ukeles in her 1969 Maintenance Art Manifesto:

 

“... what you think maintenance is; how you feel about spending whatever parts of your life you spend on maintenance activities; what is the relationship between maintenance and freedom; what is the relationship between maintenance and life’s dreams.”

​

Exhibition curated by Society of Art History and Fine Arts (SAHFA):

Jori Bassett

Maria Grimaldo

Norah Harson

Cece Lopez

Evan Price

​

With assitance from the Ricker Library staff:

Siobhan McKissic

Mallika Ramachandran