22/07/2025
Luiza Margan: En Route
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On Thursday, July 24, at 8 PM, the exhibition En Route by artist Luiza Margan will open at Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art.
The exhibition will remain on view until August 29, 2025.
The art installation En Route marks the fourth iteration of Luiza Margan’s sculptural project, originally titled Hotel (E)Migranti. Following earlier presentations in Mürz and Klagenfurt (Austria), as well as in the public space of Sela na Krasu near the Slovenian-Italian border, the work unfolds as both a historical and socio-political reflection. It pays tribute to the former Hotel Emigranti in Rijeka’s harbor—an architectural structure closely linked to transatlantic migration—and to the broader narratives of movement, departure, and displacement that it continues to embody today.
The Hotel Emigranti was built in 1905 in Fiume—today’s Rijeka—during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to accommodate transatlantic migrants passing through the port. These travelers were largely impoverished people from Central and Eastern Europe, fleeing economic hardship and social instability in search of opportunities in the Americas. At the time, Rijeka was a crucial migration hub for such journeys.
In response to the growing flow of transatlantic migration, the Ministry of the Interior of the Hungarian administration—then the colonial force ruling over Croatian territories within the Austro-Hungarian Empire—commissioned the construction of Hotel Emigranti in Rijeka’s harbor. The initiative served both strategic and humanitarian purposes, allowing the Empire to control and profit from migration while providing organized support and infrastructure for departing travelers.
The 160-meter-long building was equipped with waiting rooms, medical and quarantine facilities, dormitories, and social areas, accommodating up to 60,000 people per year at its peak. Built using an innovative reinforced concrete technique—then a first in the region—and designed in an elegant Secessionist style, the hotel combined modern amenities with a safer, more hygienic environment for those in transit.
The hotel operated in this capacity until 1914. It was later converted into a hospital and eventually repurposed as an industrial facility. Today, it lies in ruins, and its fate as a cultural and industrial heritage site remains uncertain.
Luiza Margan’s installation at Apoteka in Vodnjan—situated along the historical route connecting the major port cities of Rijeka and Trieste—features a sculptural work, a wall intervention, and photographic assemblages. The sculpture Guard is a 1:1 replica of Secessionist sculptural elements found on the flat rooftop of the Hotel Emigranti, overlooking the harbor. These concrete forms may represent stylized seagulls—local coastal birds often seen perched on rooftops—captured in a moment of open wings. Removed from their decorative, architectural function, they emerge as abstract figures: pillar-like structures branching outward, their wings extended as if to transform into a form of shelter.
There is a nostalgic undertone embedded in the photographic assemblages and the color palette they employ—conjuring memories of a vanished past, yet also gesturing toward imagined or longed-for futures. This reflective, almost daydream-like quality offers a gentle counterpoint to the heavier socio-political themes, allowing space for tenderness and hope.
En Route at Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art draws attention to the ongoing global—and particularly regional—shortage of humanitarian support and safe, dignified infrastructures for people undertaking dangerous migration routes in search of security and opportunity. In the context of Croatia and the wider Balkans, where migration continues to be marked by border violence, inadequate asylum systems, and limited transit support, the work resonates with urgent political and ethical questions surrounding mobility and belonging today, demand visionary solutions that center human dignity and care.
Luiza Margan is an artist based in Vienna, born in Rijeka.
She works with sculpture, photography, installation, performance, and spatial intervention, exploring the tension between dominant and suppressed historical narratives that emerge in public spaces, architecture, and cultural institutions. By combining artistic and material research, she creates works that reflect both individual experiences and broader social contexts. She has exhibited in numerous international institutions and has carried out a series of acclaimed public space interventions. Her works are part of both public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, Belvedere 21 – Museum of Contemporary Art in Vienna, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, MMSU in Rijeka, and the Tobacco Museum in Ljubljana, among others. Most recently, her work was presented in a solo exhibition at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany (2023), and in group exhibitions at the Leopold Museum in Vienna (2024), Kunsthaus in Graz (2024–25), the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg (2024), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka (2023), and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2022), among others. Among the many accolades she has received are a fellowship from the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York (2008/2009) and the Visual Artist Fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2019