Memoirs of women
from mining familiesArtresearch project

The Memoirs of Women from Mining Families is a multimedia artivist research project that collects narratives, domestic archival materials, oral herstories, and photographic portraits of women from mining backgrounds (including female miners) across various coal regions.

These materials document the “ghostly” places described in the memoirs. Their existence-within-nonexistence primarily refers to closed mines, which remain deeply embedded in the community’s collective memory. Mine closures had far-reaching effects on residents and continue to serve as reservoirs of memory and communal feeling.

The project aims to critically examine the presence and absence of women in the (post)industrial cultural memory of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin and other coal regions in Europe.