The exhibition features a series of visual portraits and personal stories of fifteen Ukrainian women artists who continue to live and create within the context of full-scale war. The project centers on inner transformation, emotional endurance, and the female experience under ongoing pressure and uncertainty.

In the spring of 2025, Isa Ho spent several weeks traveling across the Kyiv and Lviv regions, meeting with artists in their studios and homes. Through intimate conversations and interviews, she gathered firsthand accounts of life and artistic practice during wartime — stories that became the foundation of this project.

Before the Future continues the thematic arc of Ho’s earlier series — I Am Snow White, Peony, Girls, and Westbeth — some of which are also included in the exhibition. In those works, she explored how female identity is shaped by cultural scripts and social expectations. In Ukraine, her focus deepened: personal narratives gave way to collective witnessing, shared presence, and a layered dialogue shaped by the female experience of war.

Isa Ho is a Taiwanese visual artist working with photography, video, and installation. Her practice investigates issues of identity, female subjectivity, and the psychological dynamics of contemporary society.

A graduate of the Taipei National University of the Arts, Ho has participated in numerous international exhibitions and residencies in the United States, France, Italy, Israel, Germany, Korea, China, Australia. Her works are included in the collections of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), Jut Art Museum, among others.

This project marks both a continuation of her artistic research and her first visit to Ukraine.

Today in Ukraine, the future feels suspended, fragile, and deeply uncertain. The present is charged with emotions that are not only hard to endure but often difficult to fully comprehend. This exhibition invites us to question our assumptions about happiness. It draws us into a reality on the edge, where life continues under threat, and where reflection and healing occur not after trauma but within it.

Isa Ho, a Taiwanese artist, came to Ukraine not as a journalist or documentarian but as an attentive witness. Living in Taiwan, a country shaped by geopolitical tension, has given her a particular sensitivity and a heightened sense of urgency. With her camera and quiet presence, she entered the homes and studios of 15 Ukrainian women artists. What she encountered was not a singular narrative but layered, intimate realities shaped by war.

The title “Before the Future”, in the context of Ukraine today, captures the tension of this moment. It is not nostalgia for the past, nor naive hope for what lies ahead. It is a focus on the present – a trembling interval, a charged moment. Each moment. Alive, uncertain, real.

The portraits in this project do not seek to be aesthetic objects or documentary records. They leave space for contemplation. White voids within the images mark silences, absences, and truths that resist resolution. They are internal doubts, moments of sharing the most intimate, the weight of sacrifice. These are not gaps to be corrected but signs of how life is reshaped under pressure.

Through the lived experiences of Ukrainian women artists during wartime, Isa returns to her long-standing investigation of perfection, identity, and happiness.

“Under the extraordinary conditions of war, I felt a strong sense of real presence, here and now,” Isa reflects. “The Ukrainian people are fiercely resisting the adversity they face, doing so with resilience and dignity. They engage deeply with human connections, their own realities, and the present moment. By contrast, the non-war world, with its problems, its pace, appeared increasingly absurd. This is where my rethinking of happiness began.”

These stories remind us that life does not always align with dominant ideals of happiness. In stable, peaceful societies, we are told to be productive, goal-oriented, and emotionally resilient. But in times of prolonged crisis, these standards begin to crumble. Daily life demands not just growth but endurance; not just achievements, but first, the decision to show up, despite exhaustion, fear, and instability. In such conditions, happiness may feel distant or idealised. But in reality, it shifts. It becomes more fluid, embodied in gestures of care, in everyday routines, in the simple act of continuing, here and now.

Isa’s journey toward this project was shaped by her ongoing artistic inquiry into female identity and societal norms. After graduating, she began with “I Am Snow White”, a project exploring how fairy tales of happiness clash with modern life. In the “Girl” series, she examined the frustrations of contemporary womanhood; “Peony” focused on how women reframe their roles through pop culture. In “Westbeth”, she envisioned a utopia that reflects alternative possibilities for social existence. Some works from these series are also featured in this exhibition. Her experience in Ukraine, intense, sorrowful, transformative, extended and deepened these earlier explorations.