Mikveh Dreams: The Jewish Feminist Art of Mierle Laderman Ukeles in the United States, 1970s and 1980s

Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939) is one of the very few Orthodox Jewish artists who was active in the feminist art movement in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. Most of her work, inspired by eco-feminism, focused on creating public and environmental art, and she became a prominent figure in the art world with her maintenance art. Although Laderman Ukeles focused on conceptual eco-feminism in the 1970s and 1980s for which she became well know, she also dealt with Jewish themes in her art. The treatment of ritual immersion and the mikva (ritual bath) were central to Laderman Ukeles’s Jewish art during this period. This paper will explore the mikva works of Laderman Ukeles in light of the feminist discourse during the period in which they were created. My paper argues that contrary to the mainstream discourse of the American feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which rejected religion and the Jewish custom of ritual immersion, Laderman Ukeles connected feminism and traditional Judaism. I will also show that in spite of her seemingly positive and non-critical point of departure, Laderman Ukeles’s mikva works broke religious taboos undermining the patriarchal structures of Orthodox Jewish society. At this crucial moment of the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States, Laderman Ukeleses appropriation of women’s rituals constituted a powerful call for women to be reborn as both Jews and feminists.