Young artists with a personal connection to the mining region show how this specific past gets under the skin, in their works. 

As the third generation after the mines closed, they know the mining past as oral history because of their childhood in this region, or as part of the family history. They address issues that have been sidelined and make issues of nostalgia and identity experienceable by, for example, making connections to heritage and cultural history. In this way, they open the eyes to re-evaluation through new stories, unexpected twists, and a new perspective on the future from the present (and the past). 

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The title Oet d'r Sjtub, in Heerlen dialect, alludes to the complex and ambivalent ambition of remembering during collective historicizing moments like the Year of the Mines is one. What happens when the dust is swept away? The dust, shtub, that colored the mining region and its people black to the lungs. In dialect, "oet d'r sjtub maken" still means "to get out of the way, to disappear. The title is also symptomatic of Heerlen's unprecedented economic and social growth during the mines. The influx of migrants transformed the original dialect into the Steenkolenplat or Huillands ('Dutch to make you cry'), a creole language between Dutch and Limburgish, 0 which nowhere else in the country has gained such a dominant position as in Heerlen. 

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The artists 

'Oét d'r sjtub' shows work by Melanie Bonajo (1978, Heerlen), the daughter of a Slovenian miner from Heerlerbaan, among others. She is currently on a work fellowship at the renowned PS1 New York. 
Photojournalist Roger Cremers (1972) of Bingelrade, who also comes from a family of miners, shows portraits of miners around the world. He made the image accompanying this post in Emalahleni, South Africa in 2010. 
 
Su Tomesen (b. 1970) lives alternately in Amsterdam and Jogjakarta, Indonesia. The surname Tomesen ended up in Limburg because her grandfather came to the mines from the Achterhoek. For Oét d'r sjtub she realized two works inspired by the pamphlet "The Carbon Colonization" (1974). 
The complete team of artists includes: Melanie Bonajo, Roger Cremers, Chaim van Luit, Danae Moons, Sandro Setola, Su Tomesen. 
 

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