Installation with objects, photo-montage and video, 2013

The project analyzes the recently privatized Shipyard 3rd of May in Rijeka, Croatia, an industrial plant deeply embedded in the structures of the city and the economy of the country but marked by the long-time disintegration of socialist state ownership into neoliberal globalized work structures. The privatization also means closing down many of the work sectors and production lines, as work of this kind is redirected to cheaper labor countries as Croatia approached the EU in 2013.

More then We Then We Are

is miniature sculpture (found object from the shipyard in Rijeka), a rusty screw-nut made of 3 equal hexagonal parts, one of which is cleaned, polished and coated with gold. The object addresses the surplus value of work and alienation of labor from its product in the commodity production. It grasps on the ideas of desire and the extra value applied through labor.

Within the Giant’s Belly , fine art print, 2013

The work examines the role of art in the represe-

ntation of socialist ideology, by analyzing the sculpture representing the worker, a bronze statue standing in front of the shipyard in Rijeka where it was placed in 1965, (made by Croatian sculptor Vinko Matkovic).

The photomontage print is an intervention to the photograph of this larger-than-life sculpture including the digital erasure of the product of the worker’s labor – the vessel – from its hands, with them remaining open and empty, and the body split in two.

© Luiza Margan 2021