Mineriada is a sarcastically used term that combines the Romanian word miner (miner) with the ending -iada, as in olimpiada. Anton Roland Laub’s work explores a divided society that led Romania into a decade of isolation. The artist examines the places where the events took place and the trauma of physical violence when miners loyal to the regime were incited and brought to the capital by train to beat down the pro-European opposition. The work arose in response to photographs Laub’s father took in June 1990, which record the devastation in Bucharest. Despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in 2014, the deadly attacks of that time have never been reckoned with. Laub addresses the latent effects of a repressed past and raises our awareness for recurrent conflicts in a polarized world.

After Mobile Churches and Last Christmas (of Ceaușescu), Laub has now published Mineriada, the last part of his trilogy with Kehrer Verlag. The work was supported by a Visual Arts Research Grant awarded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin, as well as a publication grant from the Stiftung Kulturwerk, Bonn.