Mineriada
Anton Roland Laub
With “Mineriada”, the artist Anton Roland Laub embarks on a journey into the past and delves into the transgenerational trauma of Romanian society after the end of the Ceaușescu government. He addresses the violent unrest of 1990, when thousands of incited miners loyal to the regime were brought from the Jiu Valley to Bucharest to brutally crush pro-European protests. Despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in 2014, the deadly attacks remain legally unresolved - a repressed past that Laub traces in his pictures. With his work, the artist raises awareness of recursive conflicts in a polarized world.
In a retrospective from Strasbourg via Bucharest to Petroșani, Laub examines the places where the events took place, the unspoken suffering of physical violence and its traces in collective memory. The starting point are photographs taken by his father in June 1990, supplemented by his own research, personal experiences and memories. The artist's primary aim is not to come to terms with history, but to approach the subject through the latent presence of the event in the unconscious.
As part of the EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography
