Temporary exhibition: Through the Dark.
What does Pride have to do with mining history? At first glance, perhaps not much. On closer inspection, a great deal. Mining history is about work, bodies, hierarchies, comradeship, law, migration, dependency and community. It is the history of worlds that are still described largely in male terms. This makes it all the more important to ask which lives were barely recorded, deliberately silenced or only became visible in court records.
With the exhibition “Through the Dark”, the South Tyrol Mining Museum takes Pride Month as an opportunity to explore these questions. Pride stands for visibility, equal rights and solidarity. It also reminds us that queer people have been excluded, persecuted or pushed out of historical narratives in many periods and societies. “Through the Dark” takes up these themes and brings them into a field where they have rarely been addressed: the history of mining and its social orders.
The exhibition ranges from antiquity to the recent past. Alongside the historical context, it tells the stories of people whose behaviour we might today describe as “queer”. Some traces are clear, others remain fragmentary. Many people could not live their relationships, desires or identity openly. In court records, chronicles, letters and administrative documents, they often appear only at the moment when they were persecuted, mocked or punished.
Well-known historical figures and previously overlooked biographies from the world of mining are brought into view and given space: from Michelangelo and King Edward II to the victims of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, and to the only woman still working underground in mining in Germany today.
“Through the Dark” connects historical research with questions that remain relevant today. Who becomes visible in the archives? Which ways of life were recognised, and which were silenced or criminalised? How do terms, norms and power relations change? The exhibition offers no simple answers. It opens a space for stories that long remained at the margins and looks at mining history also as social history, as the history of bodies and as the history of relationships.
The exhibition is available online free of charge from 7 June. From late June to the end of August, it can also be visited free of charge at the sites of the South Tyrol Mining Museum.
With the exhibition “Through the Dark”, the South Tyrol Mining Museum takes Pride Month as an opportunity to explore these questions. Pride stands for visibility, equal rights and solidarity. It also reminds us that queer people have been excluded, persecuted or pushed out of historical narratives in many periods and societies. “Through the Dark” takes up these themes and brings them into a field where they have rarely been addressed: the history of mining and its social orders.
The exhibition ranges from antiquity to the recent past. Alongside the historical context, it tells the stories of people whose behaviour we might today describe as “queer”. Some traces are clear, others remain fragmentary. Many people could not live their relationships, desires or identity openly. In court records, chronicles, letters and administrative documents, they often appear only at the moment when they were persecuted, mocked or punished.
Well-known historical figures and previously overlooked biographies from the world of mining are brought into view and given space: from Michelangelo and King Edward II to the victims of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, and to the only woman still working underground in mining in Germany today.
“Through the Dark” connects historical research with questions that remain relevant today. Who becomes visible in the archives? Which ways of life were recognised, and which were silenced or criminalised? How do terms, norms and power relations change? The exhibition offers no simple answers. It opens a space for stories that long remained at the margins and looks at mining history also as social history, as the history of bodies and as the history of relationships.
The exhibition is available online free of charge from 7 June. From late June to the end of August, it can also be visited free of charge at the sites of the South Tyrol Mining Museum.