George Petrides’ Sculpture “The Refugee” Finds Homes Around the World

Inherent in the definition of the word “refugee” is the concept of travel to parts unknown, to find a safe place to call home. It is appropriate, then, that George Petrides’ sculpture “The Refugee” has followed many paths, with versions scattering around the globe, finding sanctuary in diverse and unexpected places. 

The Hellenic Heads Exhibition Travelling to 8 Cities Around the World

“The Refugee” was first sculpted by Petrides as one of the six over-lifesize busts in the traveling exhibition Hellenic Heads: A Personal Exploration of Greek History and Culture over 2,500 Years.  That exhibition premiered at the Embassy of Greece to the USA in Washington, D.C. with over 2,000 people seeing it on Europe Day 2022. Then it traveled to other U.S. venues and is presently exhibited at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, Illinois through December 10, 2023. Marianne Kountoures, Executive Director of NHM stated "George reminds us that history is personal and interwoven with the larger human history. Bridging the gap between past and present is what we do at the National Hellenic Museum. Our mission is to share Greek history, art and culture, and the Greek American story." From Chicago, the exhibition will travel to Europe and then on to the Far East for a total of eight cities. 

Petrides, a sculptor of Greek birth, selected six historical periods that are important to Greece’s heritage, combining extensive research with his own family members to pose for the six busts; on their bases, these sculptures stand over 2 meters tall. The six periods are:

• Classical Greece (510 BC to 323 BC) 

• Byzantine Empire (330 AD to 1453 AD) 

• Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829) 

• Destruction of Smyrna (1922) 

• Nazi occupation and Greek Civil War (1941 to 1949) 

• The Present 

Before sculpting each bust, he conducted rigorous research, including archaeological artifacts, academic sources, family stories, and historical photographs. Then, for each period, he sought out sculptural precedents–masterpieces by earlier sculptors like Michelangelo, Donatello and Rodin–to study how they addressed similar themes, selecting one or two pieces to serve as touchstones. Then, he asked a family member to pose for him, some “live” and others, who had passed, through photographs and memory. Four of the six heads are of female subjects, as commented on by Forbes Magazine in Globally Renowned Sculptor George Petrides Carves A Matriarchal Gaze Into Greek History And Heritage. Please see a guided tour by the sculptor, the video The Making of Hellenic Heads, TV coverage, art critic reviews, exhibition catalog, here

The Model for “The Refugee” 

The inspiration of one of the six heads, “The Refugee,” was his grandmother Maria, one of the tens of thousands of refugees who fled the destruction of Smyrna by Ottoman forces in September 1922. As the former center of art and commerce burned, there was large-scale looting, rape, and violence that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Armenians and Greeks (Wiki: Burning of Smyrna). Petrides added: “I grew up with this wonderful woman all the way into my early teens when she lived with my parents and me. I absorbed her history indirectly, as she was reluctant to talk specifics, and yet, from comments here and there, and from my mother, I learned.”

Petrides modeled this bust in part on photos of refugees who crammed onto the waterfront of Smyrna as they abandoned their homes; he imagined what his grandmother might have been thinking and feeling then–and in the subsequent months when she began to rebuild her life in a new, less-than-hospitable city: Athens, Greece.

Public Sculpture in Athens, Greece

Many of the people displaced from ravaged Smyrna and other cities in Asia Minor fled to Greece including Athens. Petrides’ Refugee also found a home in that city. On September 14, 2022, one hundred years to the day from when Smyrna was set ablaze, Petrides and Mayor Dimitris Galanis unveiled “Refugee-Woman of Smyrna” in Neo Psychiko, an area that became the home of many Asia Minor refugees. This version of “The Refugee'' is considerably larger, standing almost nine feet high on its base, its forms were reworked by Petrides in its large size. It was installed permanently in front of the church of Agios Georgios, one of the largest in Greece. The square in front of the church features a beautiful garden, a children’s play area, and a water fountain with the names of the lost homelands in Asia Minor carved into red granite. (googlemaps) Serendipitously, there was an empty corner: local residents told Petrides that it had been part of the original plan to include a memorial sculpture, but it had not come to pass. The unveiling occurred on September 14, 2023, 100 years to the day of the burning of Smyrna. Petrides stated: “I was honoring not only my grandmother but my mother as well, who grew up with the challenges that her own refugee mother faced in rebuilding her life. I was grateful that my mother was able to attend the ceremony. And pleasantly surprised when residents came up to me and expressed their approval. One exclaimed ‘That’s my grandmother!’”

Simonopetra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece

In August 2023, Petrides traveled to the Simonopetra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece. Mount Athos, also known as the Holy Mountain in Greek, has been a spiritual center of the Eastern Orthodox church since 1054 C.E. Though located in Greece, it has been semi-autonomous since Byzantine times, and it is home to twenty monasteries, including Simonopetra Monastery, and over 1,400 monks on all of Mount Athos. The monasteries are also critical to art history as they contain many masterpieces among its wall paintings, icons and manuscripts dating back centuries.

Simonopetra Monastery, a stunning edifice perched on a cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea, was founded in the 13th century by Simon the Athonite, after having a vision on Christmas Eve (circa 1250 C.E.) of the Star of Bethlehem hovering over the rock formation and hearing the Virgin Mary telling him to build a monastery on top of the rock and to name it “New Bethlehem.” Over the course of the monastery’s nearly eight hundred year history, the buildings experienced devastating fires; after each fire the buildings were rebuilt, expanded, and the brotherhood of monks was revived. In one of those rebuildings, the monks who came to live there were from areas near Smyrna. To honor this shared history, Petrides made a smaller version of the Refugee, one which could be carried in a backpack up a steep hill! He was honored to present this to Simonopetra’s Archimandrite Elder Elisaios. The Refugee has been placed in the monastery’s library, near some 100,000 books and manuscripts, many dating back centuries. (For more information about the monastery: https://simonopetrafoundation.org.)

The Consulate General of Greece in Smyrna, Turkey

Consulates offer services to citizens of their home countries: legal help, document processing, translation work, and events that encourage cultural exchange. To a traveler or expat, the consulate comes to be an invaluable small footprint of home in a foreign land. The Greek consulate in Smyrna (Izmir in modern Turkey) offers all of these things to a small population of Greek citizens living there.

Recently, the Consulate General of Greece in that city, the third largest in Turkey, became a safe harbor for one more traveler: a two-foot-high version of The Refugee was placed in its reception area. Petrides said: “I cannot imagine what my grandmother, the inspiration of this sculpture, would have thought of this!  After a century, “The Refugee” found her way back to her original home.”

More information on the traveling exhibition: https://www.petrides.art/hellenic-heads-overview

More general information:  www.petrides.art

Contact email: info@petrides.art