Coal Traces: Clouds over Sawahlunto

In spring 2025, curator and community-builder Jop Vermeesch, visual artist Lara Gasparotto, photographer Jonathan Widdershoven, and sound artist Gert-Jan van Stiphout traveled to Indonesia. The trip was prompted by a search into the family history and traces of Jop’s great-grandfather Henri Vermeesch, who worked as an electrician in the Ombilin Mine in Sawahlunto, West Sumatra.

Ombilin Mine

The Ombilin Mine is an example of Dutch colonial exploitation: it was extracted and operated by the colonial government of the former Dutch East Indies from its opening in 1892 until the Japanese occupation in 1941. After Indonesia gained independence, the mine remained in use until 2002. The coal was crucial for shipping between the many islands of the Dutch East Indies. For a long time, the mining complex was seen as a showcase of technical progress, yet it also symbolized colonial exploitation. The mine operated under extremely harsh conditions: prisoners were forced to work in chains, and miners labored under contracts that were nominally free but effectively exploitative. Since 2019, the mine complex has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Jop Vermeesch

Jop’s research is rooted in his personal family history. As a third-generation Indo-Dutch person, he grew up in Heerlen, a city marked by its mining past. Discovering that his great-grandfather had been involved with the Ombilin Mine, and that engineers who worked in Sawahlunto also played roles in Limburg’s mining industry, gave his inquiry both urgency and direction. In this exhibition, he presents archival materials, family photographs, documents, and testimonies that make these connections visible, alongside photographs by Jonathan Widdershoven and sound recordings by Gert-Jan van Stiphout, which document the encounters and environments experienced during the trip.

Lara Gasparotto

Lara Gasparotto’s work serves as the visual translation of this research. In this project, she connects her artistic perspective with the search for 'coal traces' at the Ombilin Mine and in the city of Sawahlunto. The images Gasparotto made in Sawahlunto reveal places where human history is visible in the landscape, where nature and humans intersect, and where they have influenced each other over time.

An important source of inspiration for this journey was the project Looking for Vivi (2019), in which Gasparotto travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo with museologist Paola Basika Lumonga and photographer Dareck Tuba. There, too, the colonial legacy was central, and photography was used to search for new ways to depict a shared but fraught past.

Coal traces: Clouds over Sawahlunto refers both to the tangible traces of coal and mining, and to the clouds that continuously hover over Sawahlunto: symbols of history that is both past and living. It is a visual investigation that is at once personal and collective, revealing connections between Limburg and Indonesia, between present and past, and between colonial exploitation and post-industrial challenges.

This project is realized as part of the pilot program ArtBase and is included in the Year of Heerlen Heritage.