Italian
Opening on September 7 at 6:00 pm at the DoubleTree By Hilton Trieste, the solo photography exhibition by Barbara Essl “Silent Trieste. Timeless Spaces,” curated by Le Vie delle Foto. The exhibition will run until September 22.
Trieste – From September 8 to 22, 2025, Trieste hosts a new event dedicated to contemporary art. At the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Trieste, the solo exhibition Silent Trieste. Timeless Spaces by Barbara Essl, curated by Le Vie delle Foto, will be inaugurated. The official opening is scheduled for Sunday, September 7 at 6:00 pm, in the presence of the artist and curator Linda Simeone. The exhibition will then be open daily from 11:30 am to 11:00 pm until Monday, September 22, 2025.
Info and guided tour bookings: leviedellefoto@gmail.com
The Abandoned City
Particular attention is given to the abandoned places of Trieste. The port city preserves a unique architectural layer: a monumental gasometer, once-bustling cinemas, empty administrative buildings, rusting port facilities. Here, industrial heritage and urban melancholy intertwine, forming a powerful echo of past social visions.
Yet Essl’s gaze is not anchored to the past. Alongside her documentation of decline, the artist also highlights signs of new vitality—such as the redevelopment of the Palazzo Compartimentale—showing how spaces are continuously inscribed into the city’s history.
The Exhibition
The Timeless series is conceived as a visual archive of decline: a memory in images that reveals not only slow decay, but also the beauty of transition. In Essl’s photographs, one finds not just the aesthetic allure of what is lost, but also the great themes of our time—transformation, impermanence, loss.
The Artist
Her works have been exhibited internationally in Austria, Italy, Slovenia, the United States, and China, entering major public and private collections. Already in 2023, Barbara Essl was present in Trieste with her exhibition at Magazzino 26.
Trained in Paris, Barbara Essl has developed a distinctive style focused on the aesthetics of memory and dissolution. Through photography and mixed media, she restores life to forgotten places, lost figures, and decaying objects, endowing them with a new aura and revealing their hidden soul.
