Photo: Serhii Melnychenko, View from a dugout by Oleksandr / Dob, Kharkiv region, from the series Frontline Rolls: Photos, Letters & Artifacts from Ukrainian Soldiers, analog photograph, digital print, 2025

»After the Winter« approaches winter not as a season, but as a reflection on several senses: darkness (no light), cold (no warmth), disruptions of water and electricity – realities that reshape the experience of space.

Wherever you are, your domestic elements like rooms, radiators, blankets, power banks  become symbolic units of life perseverance. Space absorbs tension, fear, fatigue, and anticipation, while the body adapts to uncertainty and prolonged instability. These conditions do not disappear with the change of season; they persist, accumulating in soil, walls, and memory. What was once cyclical becomes continuous.

The show brings together Ukrainian artists living both in Ukraine and abroad, reflecting on how prolonged war reshapes perception, everyday life, and artistic practice. For artists in Ukraine, the works often emerge from direct experiences of war: damaged infrastructures, blackouts, frontline realities, and the constant negotiation with danger and loss. Exiled artists encounter the war through distance – fragmented communication, memories, and prolonged uncertainty. Their works frequently address displacement, isolation, and fractured belonging, while also tracing forms of resilience and adaptation.

What happens when an emergency becomes routine? How does cold alter the perception of domestic, urban, and rural space? What remains embedded in matter and in the body, and what lies ahead?

»After« does not imply resolution. It marks a fragile interval following exhaustion, before experience settles into history. Shown in July, within the stability of summer light, the works unfold against a different climatic and infrastructural reality. The exhibition does not propose answers but creates space for articulation – a momentary gathering of forms, affects, and registers that resist easy closure. It holds duration open, allowing for attention to what persists beyond the immediate.

Participating artists: Anastasiia Antonenko, Mark Chehodaiev, etchingroom1, Diana Fedoriaka, Sviatoslav Koverzniev, Olena Kurzel, Serhii Melnychenko, Yaroslava Melnychenko, miki-mike665, Tetiana Pukhnavtseva, Maryna Shtanko, Karina Synytsia, Maria Vasylenko, Yulianna Verba, Ola Yeriemieieva.

Opening: 16 July 2026, 5pm at ERSTE Foundation, Am Belvedere 1, 1100 Vienna

The ERSTE Foundation is committed to supporting Ukrainian people affected by the war.