After the Sugar – Transformation Processes at the Border at Kunstverein Eisenstadt / Eisenstadt

Artist(s): Linda Luse, Ilona Németh, Gabriele Sturm, Catrin Bolt, transparadiso, Isa Rosenberger, Paul Busk
Curator: Barbara Holub
Art space: Kunstverein Eisenstadt
Address: Sugarfactory Siegendortf, GZO-Gewerbegebiet 16, 7011 Siegendorf, Austria
Duration: 03/05/2026 - 28/06/2026
Credits: Lorenz Kunath

After Sugar is a group exhibition that examines how sugar shapes ecologies and economies, and how its routes cut across borders of land, labor, and industry. Through installations, field research, and archival materials, the participating artists trace the historical and contemporary impacts of cultivation, processing, and trade—from fields and factories to the infrastructures that move goods and value. Set against the legacy of the former sugar industry in Siegendorf, the exhibition reflects on extraction, taste, and the legacies inscribed in landscapes and communities.

Linda Luse’s Agreement anchors the exhibition: an installation of sugar‑beet roots cast in sanitary‑ware ceramic and glazed with ash from beet leaves. Gathered as a dispersed pile, the forms hover between harvest and residue, nourishment and commodity—materializing the thresholds where land, labor, and industry meet.

Ilona Németh maps the afterlives of decommissioned sugar plants in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary; Catrin Bolt addresses labor on coffee plantations in Uganda; Gabriele Sturm undertakes an artistic investigation of the former sugar factory in Siegendorf; and Isa Rosenberger follows the transformation of the Enns factory into the Kulturfabrik. Additional contributions include a large‑scale wall work proposed by Paul Busk and transparadiso’s engagement with the by‑products and residues of sugar production.