The exhibition catalog

Welcome to Hellenic Heads: Legacy and Renewal. The exhibition began in Washington, D.C., in May 2022 and has reached eight cities in 2022–2026, including Venice, where it was shown alongside the 2024 Biennale, and Berlin, its eighth stop. Through these six portraits, I invite you to explore Greek history and four generations of my family.

The exhibition began with a question: Which historical periods most shape a modern Greek or a Greek of the Diaspora? I chose six periods spanning 2,500 years, believing that each contributed to my character and that of my people. Some, like the Classical and Byzantine eras, ended long ago, yet their influence remains palpable. Others, like the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Second World War, were experienced directly by our grandparents and parents; we have absorbed them—consciously and unconsciously—through their stories, silences, and behavior.

The six periods, and the family member who posed for each, are: • Classical Greece (510–323 BC) – my mother • Byzantine Empire (330–1453 AD) – my father • Greek War of Independence (1820s) – my wife • Asia Minor Catastrophe (1920s) – my grandmother • Nazi Occupation and Greek Civil War (1940s) – self-portrait • Present, Looking to the Future – my daughter

As you will see in the six historical chapters, I undertook extensive research for each period, drawing on archaeology, historical sources, family stories, and archival photographs. I sought a “sculptural precedent”—a work by a master sculptor such as Michelangelo, Donatello, or Rodin who grappled with themes similar to my own. I then asked a family member to pose, either in person or through photographs and memory.

Beyond this catalog, you can view my research on the dedicated website www.hellenicheads.gr. This includes an 18-minute documentary, The Making of the Hellenic Heads (featuring footage of the sculpting process), and an 8-minute guided tour of the finished exhibition.

My creative process marries ancient techniques with modern technology. After the research phase, I model each bust in clay using traditional methods. I then move into a digital phase involving 3D scanning, digital sculpting, and large-scale 3D printing using recycled materials. Once the sculpture “returns” to the physical world, I rework it by hand before casting it in bronze or coating it with metals and patinas. This process is documented in the film George Petrides: Public Sculpture 2022– 2025 and on the YouTube channel @petridesart. On-site, informational panels and QR codes allow visitors to move fluidly between the physical sculptures, historical context, and video documentation.

Legacy and Renewal

A central motivation for creating these Heads was to look more deeply at the people who raised me and the ways they shaped me. To know them was to confront the harsh conditions of their youth. These are reflected in the chapters on the Asia Minor Catastrophe (lived by my grandmother) and the Nazi Occupation and Greek Civil War (experienced by both parents). When you encounter these three sculptures, I hope you sense the emotions I perceived growing up: resilience, dignity, and hope for a better future.

Alongside them is a self-portrait depicting my own absorption and processing of these inherited experiences—partly for my own healing, and partly to clear the stage for my daughter to lead a lighter life. Parallel to this four-generation bloodline, you will meet the sculpture of my wife, with her own distinct spirit and history.

Public Sculpture

As of August 2026, my permanent public sculpture program comprises 40 works, installed or in progress: 15 outdoor and 25 indoor, across seven sectors and eight countries. The works serve corporate, educational, governmental, healthcare, museum, religious, and residential settings. The current selection is at www.petrides.art.

Many of these works are enlargements or adaptations of the Hellenic Heads. For example: • Refugee: An enlargement of this head became the monumental Refugee—Woman of Smyrna in Athens. Unveiled in 2022 on the centenary of the destruction of Smyrna, it stands in a neighborhood settled by refugees a century ago. I was moved when residents spoke to me there about their own grandmothers.

• Thalia: Variations of Thalia form part of the public sculpture program, including projects in Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Türkiye, and the USA. Multiple versions were commissioned by Tiffany & Co. for locations such as The Landmark (their NYC flagship), Paris, and Madrid—each finished in Tiffany’s signature color. I am honored to have these displayed alongside blue-chip artists such as Basquiat, Hirst, Kapoor, and Turrell. • Archon / Constantine: An adaptation of Archon became Constantine and the Vision of the Cross. This monumental work stands at the Koimisis Greek Orthodox Church in Southampton, NY. Constantine’s gaze directs toward a cross fabricated from World Trade Center steel—echoing the Roman emperor’s vision in 312 AD. Smaller versions appear in institutions in New York, Türkiye, and Italy, including two in Constantinople (Istanbul), the city he founded. • Kore: Versions of Kore include Kore III at the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN. One stands in the lobby of the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN, reminding diplomats that their work shapes the world our children inherit. Another is installed at the General Children’s Hospital “Panagiotis & Aglaia Kyriakou”, offering solace to young patients and their families.

Essays in this Catalog

In addition to the six chapters on the Heads and their historical contexts, we have prepared four essays offering distinct perspectives on the work: • Art-Historical: “The Argument for the Human Head: Petrides’s Heads in Context” • Creative Process: “From Clay to Code to Bronze: Making Thalia” • Cultural Comparison: “The Aegean and the Gulf: Parallels in Art, Space, and Civic Imagination” • Personal History: “Legacy and Renewal: Healing Generational Trauma”

These essays offer different ways into the work, so you can engage with the Heads in multiple ways, as may appeal to you. My hope is that, as you spend time with the exhibition, you will come away with a clearer sense of both Greek history and my family’s story, and that it may lead you to consider the histories, spoken and unspoken, in your own family as well.

From ancient Egypt to the present, sculptors have turned to the human head to express nearly every emotion conceivable: power, faith, memory, vulnerability. George Petrides' Hellenic Heads enter that long tradition as a deliberate confrontation. The series adopts the format of the monumental head— usually reserved for pharaohs, gods, heroes, and leaders—and fills it with the inherited fears and strengths of a specific Greek family marked by war, displacement, and transformation. It both aligns itself with and diverges from the sculptures of the Pharaonic world, from Phidias and Michelangelo, from Rodin, Brancusi, Giacometti, Bourgeois, and Schütte.

In person, the heads assert themselves before they explain themselves. The series' six busts, each approximately three feet (90 cm) in height, are placed on pedestals to achieve a total installation height of over two meters (6.5 feet). Set in rows or loose clusters, they are scaled to be taller than almost all viewers, occupying space like historic monuments yet asking not for allegiance but for recognition. At a distance, they read as clear silhouettes; up close, the uneven textures of skin, hair, and scarred surface make their histories tangible. They convey not only psychological content but also weight, mass, and the physical pleasure of modeling: clay-like ridges, sharp cuts, softened planes. Installed outdoors, the works register weather and changing light; indoors, raking illumination pulls every tool mark into focus.

Pharaonic Precedents: Authority and Fracture

The surviving Pharaonic sculptures of ancient Egypt are among the earliest ancestors of Hellenic Heads. Nefertiti’s painted bust (c. 1345 BC, discovered in 1912 and now in Berlin) has become the canonical image of ancient beauty—poised blue crown, elongated neck, and balanced features—yet its slight asymmetries and firm jaw still suggest a specific, observed person rather than a generic ideal. As the program image of the Amarna revolution, it embodies Akhenaten’s radical experiment in monotheistic sun-worship and likely served as a workshop model for her standardized image. In reliefs, she appears alongside Akhenaten performing kingly acts, feeding the view of her as co-regent or even a quasi-pharaonic figure with shared royal power. The bust’s calm frontality and contained authority condense that shared power into a single, charged head.

Petrides borrows from these works the sheer fact of command: his heads, like theirs, are felt physically before they are interpreted. But the resemblance ends there. Where the Pharaonic heads erase doubt and imperfection to demonstrate the power of the absolute monarchy, Petrides' surfaces admit fracture and roughness. Tool marks, asymmetries, and abrasions remain visible. Each Hellenic Head carries layered, sometimes contradictory messages: pride and shame, fear and resilience, beauty and damage. The earlier monuments stabilize identity; Petrides shows what it is like when identity is unsettled by history and migration, yet still capable of composure and dignity. In effect, the Egyptian head idealized an eternal king or queen, while Petrides' heads expose the vulnerable humanity of those who endured the tumults of the 20th century and survived.

Phidias and the Civic Body

With Phidias’s Parthenon pediment sculptures (5th century BC), even a non-human head can be an instrument of the polis and its myths. Almost all the carved heads of the in-the-round figures have been lost to damage or theft, so the Head of a horse of Selene from the east pediment stands in as our proxy. It depicts one of the horses of the moon goddess Selene sinking below the horizon at the dawn of Athena’s birth. The sculpture’s force lies in its physical realism—ears flattened back, flared nostrils, bulging eyes, veins, and a gaping jaw convey pure, animal exhaustion after a long night’s work—yet through this animal head, the excellence and intelligence of the sculptor are unmistakably present.

Hellenic Heads shares this use of the head as a carrier of narrative but reverses the logic. Phidias’s horse captures one mythic instant of fatigue; Petrides' human heads are defined not by a single moment but by the accumulated weight of decades. The works represent a procession of generations, from an Asia Minor grandmother who fled the burning of Smyrna in 1922, through parents shaped by occupation and civil war in the 1940s, to the artist himself and a daughter who may inherit a different story. In Phidias, the head confirms a shared myth. In Petrides, the head registers the private experience of national myths: as unease at the dinner table, as a grandmother’s silence, as a parent’s frugal caution born of wartime shortages and persecution, but also as faith in work, education, and continuity. Both bind the individual to history, but where the Parthenon dramatizes a visible divine and civic drama, Hellenic Heads reveals the weight of what is carried inward.

Michelangelo: The Engine of Decision

Michelangelo’s David (1501–1504)—considered here through the head alone—offers another kind of ideal. The head is famously beautiful, but it is not empty. The furrowed brow, tight lips, and focused gaze capture a moment of concentrated thought just before action: the dominant scholarly view holds that David shows the hero before, not after, the battle with Goliath. (Earlier Renaissance sculptors like Donatello had shown David victorious, standing over Goliath’s head; Michelangelo’s choice to depict the tense instant before the fight was revolutionary.) The head is the engine of decision, the seat of the intellect and concentration that will win the victory. This psychological focus is underscored by the sculpture's proportions: David’s head and hands are slightly oversized relative to his body, a deliberate emphasis on intellect and resolve over brute force.

Petrides' heads also prioritize the inner life over anatomical perfection, but they refuse Michelangelo’s idealization. Skin is not flawless; features are slightly skewed; hair is suggested rather than polished into ringlets. Where Michelangelo enlarges the head to make a single, decisive psychology legible, Petrides enlarges it so that decades of experience, including memories of conflict and scarcity, can be inscribed in forehead, cheek, and jaw. David captures a moment: the youth before the battle, filled with potential, his story still ahead of him. Petrides' figures stand mostly after an entire arc of events: after war, displacement, hunger. Their scale and upright bearing suggest endurance: lives rebuilt, families raised, work continued despite what came before. Both works trust that a head alone can carry a narrative, but in David that narrative is linear and triumphant, whereas in Hellenic Heads it is recurrent—an inherited trauma that returns across generations unless someone chooses to interrupt it.

Rodin: The Anti-Monument

Auguste Rodin’s studies for The Burghers of Calais (1884–1889), particularly the individual heads, function as “anti-monuments”. The Monumental Head of Pierre de Wissant shows a figure absorbed in his own thoughts. Rodin rejected heroic convention; instead of the confident, noble faces typical of 19th-century civic monuments, he portrayed the men as “troubled, isolated individuals in anguish,” giving them slumping postures and emotionally tortured features. The “emotionally tortured face” and “anguished expression” of de Wissant make the figure’s inner suffering and "extreme distress" visible as he faces his own sacrifice.

Petrides' heads share with Rodin the conviction that public sculpture can show hesitation and doubt rather than simple heroism. This connection is foundational; Petrides has explicitly cited the Burghers as an "anti-monument to the civilian who was suffering" and a direct conceptual precedent for his own work. Each of Petrides' figures is a kind of burgher, carrying the weight of decisions made elsewhere but experiencing them as ration lines, disappearances, or relocations. The difference in format matters. While the final Burghers monument places these figures mid-step, Rodin’s isolated head studies contain the entire crisis. Petrides freezes this motion entirely. His heads do not move through time so much as contain time. The “crisis” is not a single sacrifice but the sustained anxiety of living with inherited fear and learned caution—and the quiet courage of getting on with ordinary life. Both complicate commemoration, but Rodin’s drama is public and historical, while Petrides' is familial and psychological.

Brancusi and Giacometti: Essence and Fragility

In the early twentieth century, Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti strip the head almost to its essence. Brancusi’s Sleeping Muse (1910) reduces the face to a polished ovoid with only the barest traces of features, hovering between portrait and a single, universal "archetype". Giacometti’s Grande tête mince (Large Thin Head, 1954) pushes in the opposite direction: the head is stretched and thinned into a narrow "knife-blade" plane, more shard than conventional bust, embodying a "haunting" and "dislocating" sense of existential fragility. (Notably, this work was conceived in the context of Existentialist thought in 1950s Paris and is often seen as an expression of postwar alienation and anxiety.) Petrides' heads occupy a middle position between these extremes. Like Brancusi, he simplifies: features are generalized, textures unify large areas, and detail is restrained so the whole form reads clearly. Like Giacometti, he embraces elongation and imbalance; some heads feel slightly too thin, too tall, as though stressed by time and experience. Yet Petrides insists on specificity. Where Brancusi and Giacometti give us an essence of “Woman” or “Man” in general, Petrides ties the monumental head to a genealogy and a map, making broad themes answerable to concrete history. In short, Brancusi and Giacometti turned the human head into an absolute form; Petrides finds meaning in the head as a vessel of lived memory, somewhere between the universal and the personal.

Bourgeois: The Psyche as Monument

Louise Bourgeois’s fabric heads, such as Untitled (2001), relocate the monument to an interior, psychological space. Often sewn from the artist's own clothing—Untitled (2001), for example, was made from one of her pink wool jackets—the work is about fear and vigilance, the sense that nothing is fully safe. Each head functions as an architectural container for memory, its rough, stitched surface like a wall that has been patched and repatched. Bourgeois explicitly referred to the steel and glass vitrines that encase these heads as "cells," which "mimic a Museum display case" and "act as support to the disembodied head," while simultaneously trapping it, hinting at anxieties confined within a private chamber.

Both Bourgeois and Petrides work from autobiographical material and a preoccupation with the maternal line. Both understand that difficult experiences are often communicated without words, through atmosphere. Yet where Bourgeois’s soft sculptures, physically enclosed in their vitrines, emphasize a private, interior vulnerability, Petrides brings that interior into public space. His heads are made in mixed media, using recycled PETG bodies finished by hand with metal coatings and patinas, exposed to weather, city noise, and the gaze of passersby. Bourgeois makes the psyche into a private object; Petrides turns it into a public monument, arguing that the private consequences of history deserve a place in public view. The intimacy of family memory is not diminished but amplified when placed at civic scale; the "cell" is opened up, and what was enclosed in personal memory is given form for all to acknowledge.

Schütte: Monumentality and Its Discontents

Thomas Schütte’s engagement with authority and monumentality offers another contemporary parallel, particularly in his series of sculpted heads such as Wichte (Imps). These works revive the monumental portrait bust only to make it ambiguous and uneasy. The heads, often set on high shelves, glare down at the viewer "like a row of authoritarian figures," yet they are “brutalised, grotesque faces” that “mock power”; their “hieratic bearing” is undermined by caricatured, deformed features.

Petrides shares with Schütte a fascination with what happens when the human figure is enlarged beyond its natural scale. Like Schütte, he is alert to the ways sculpture can embody the state or challenge it. But Petrides chooses a different subject and a different ethic of surface. Where Schütte gives us “grotesque faces”—generalized figures of authority whose hollowness is the point—Petrides gives us grandparents and parents whose authority is fragile and sometimes compromised, yet whose endurance has made a different future imaginable. Schütte’s monumentality is ironic, exposing the emptiness of state power. Petrides' monumentality is earnest, honoring the quiet work of survival. In Wichte, monumentality itself is undermined and mocked; in Hellenic Heads, monumentality is embraced but transformed—turned toward the commemoration of resilience rather than conquest.

Coda: A New Turn in an Old Argument

Across these comparisons,the Hellenic Heads emerge as both rooted in sculptural history and distinctive in purpose. The Pharaonic heads, the Parthenon sculptures, and David used the human figure to project ideals—divine order, civic harmony, heroic virtue. Rodin, Brancusi, Giacometti, Bourgeois, and Schütte questioned those ideals, turning the figure inward or exposing its entanglement with politics, spectacle, and trauma.

Petrides adds another turn to this ongoing debate. He accepts the risk of monumentality but changes its subject. Instead of honoring a conqueror or illustrating a myth, Hellenic Heads honors those who lived through the consequences: those who queued for bread, who packed a single suitcase, who did not explain to their children why they flinched at certain sounds, and who nonetheless rebuilt lives. It uses the ancient language of stone and scale not to celebrate victory but to make visible the quiet work of survival. This act gives form to the effort not to pass wounds on intact—a form of what theorists of “postmemory” have described as the fraught transmission of trauma from one generation to the next. Petrides stands alongside the sculptors he invokes, not as an imitator but as a serious interlocutor—asking, in our own time, what the sculpted head can be asked to carry, and what kind of future might be possible if we choose to look it in the face. Each of his heads insists that personal history is history, that memory deserves its monument, and that even wounded faces can stand as arguments for resilience. In an era when monuments are being reconsidered and redefined, Petrides offers a compelling new answer in an ancient form: a monument to vulnerability, endurance, and the human head that carries them.

People often ask me: “How do you make these?” Short answer: there are many steps; it takes forever; I put my heart and soul into it—and I’m relieved when it’s done. The longer, more technical answer is this essay, in which I walk you through the creation of one of the Hellenic Heads, Thalia.

I have had to invent my own creative and fabrication process, combining the ancient and the current, to meet the needs of the sculptures you see in Hellenic Heads and other public works, many of them large-scale and sited around the world. I think of the work in ten phases:

The Foundational Question

“What am I going to make, and more importantly, why?” The “why” must have enough force to give the sculpture its life. In this case, the “why” was an exhibition concept I had been ruminating on for months. As it matured into the Hellenic Heads exhibition—with six chapters of Greek history, each with an oversize bust posed for by my family—my enthusiasm grew. I saw a way to share Greek history and culture with a global audience and, at the same time, undertake a personal journey: seeking greater understanding of my closest family, six of us over four generations.

To choose six historical periods, I looked at Greeks of today and the diaspora (including myself) and asked which histories and cultures had persisted over centuries to arrive in the present. One of them just had to be Ancient Greece.

Historical Research, Sculptural Precedent

The research, and the first head, start with the oldest period: Ancient Greece. I majored in Classics (Harvard College 1985), so some of the history and culture of Ancient Greece were familiar, much of it forgotten over the decades. I launched into research, which later became the History chapter in the catalog, but my initial concern was not producing the pages for print—it was laying a foundation for the Hellenic Heads sculptures.

I wanted to reacquaint myself with the sculptural masterpieces of the era, so I revisited major museums that hold them.

In the USA, leading collections of ancient Greek artifacts are at The Met, the MFA Boston, and the Getty; in Athens, at the National Archaeological Museum, the Acropolis Museum, and many smaller regional museums.

As I absorbed this incredible sculptural heritage, I was also looking for a “sculptural precedent”: a masterpiece, ideally from the same era as the Hellenic Heads chapter, to serve as a touchstone. For this piece, I chose a work in the Vatican Museums in Rome named Thalia, the muse of lyric poetry, which lent its name to my Thalia.

The exhibition concept was that for each period a family member would pose for me. For this first piece, my mother came to mind. But at what age? Many ancient Greek sculptures of women show young women, so: a pre-me Mom. I looked through photos of my mother in her 20s—black-and-white images from post–WWII Greece. One stood out. What a beauty, and what an expression—demure and thoughtful. Was it posed? Probably, in an era before casual snapshots.

Traditional Sculpting by Hand in Clay

Blocks of clay awaited transformation into a bust. Was I making a copy of the Vatican Thalia? No. A likeness of my mother in that 70-year-old photograph? A little resemblance would be fine, but what I really wanted was a psychological study, exploring her emotions in that photo and in her daily life as a young woman in war-torn Europe. Greece had the misfortune not just of Nazi occupation but of a civil war on its heels, ending in 1949. This photo must have been taken about then.

Now the fun part. As Rodin said, when he first held clay in his hands, he thought he had died and gone to heaven. Days passed in the studio as I created my Thalia. It was an exploration—image-finding, not image-making. I did not know the final result. Much would change as I kept reworking the clay, covering it each night with a wet cloth and a plastic bag to keep it from drying out.

3D Scanning and Creation of Digital File

After weeks of reworking the clay bust, I felt it had arrived somewhere. Out came the 3D scanner, which I waved over the surface of the sculpture so it could record a “point cloud,” a collection of data points in 3D space defined by X, Y, and Z coordinates. Back on my computer, I used specialized software to turn this data into a “mesh,” a 3D model connecting the points into a surface of triangles or squares. Now I had a digital object that I could sculpt—digitally.

Digital Sculpting

I import the mesh into my digital sculpting software of choice— Blender. On a large screen I examine the clay work, tweaking proportions and trying alterations that would have taken a day in physical clay but take seconds in digital clay. When the digital model is right, it is easy to enlarge it to a few or many times the size of the clay—with a few keystrokes. I then use specialized software to prepare it for fabrication.

Additive Manufacturing

Now I want to bring the digital Thalia back into our world. There are multiple technologies that can do this; I have focused on two and brought machines into the studio to run these processes with quality control and speed.

For larger sculptures, such as the Thalia in Hellenic Heads, I use “additive manufacturing,” specifically FDM, commonly known as 3D printing. I have about ten such machines in the studio, mostly with 50 cm–cubed build volumes, commercially purchased and upgraded for my needs. On a good day, most are humming away.

Because I also work on very large sculptures, I designed and built my own large printer, nicknamed The SculptBot. It has a build volume of 1.2 meters high by 60 cm wide and long, prints fast and accurately, and can run for days at a time, with AI monitoring quality.

Designing, acquiring, and assembling the parts was a yearlong challenge. As far as I know, there are very few printers of this quality and size designed and built in the USA. With SculptBot I can make a Thalia like the one in the exhibition in a single piece in less than a week. For her and the other Heads, the material used is recycled PETG harvested from discarded medical packaging.

The other technology I use is SLA, which employs photosensitive resin to create objects, typically much smaller works requiring high resolution.

Resculpting the New Piece

Now I have a 3D object to work with again. It is enlarged and made of material firm enough to support more material added to it, but soft enough for parts of it to be cut with power tools. I use whatever materials I intuit: bricks, dense foam, epoxy clay and epoxy glue, expanding foam, papier-mâché, plaster, medical plaster bandages, plywood, Hydrocal/Hydrostone, and wood.

If need be, I step back to Phase IV: the piece gets scanned again, reworked digitally, and a new Thalia is created. In the words of Giacometti, I keep going until someone comes and takes the piece away, or I get more interested in another piece and start working on that.

Final Object into Metal

Now we need a physical object—Thalia—with permanence and weight appropriate to an over-life-size public sculpture. It has to be able to be left outside for months at a time—as the Thalia you see was, for almost a year in Venice and again in Istanbul.

Metal is the answer. I use two kinds of metalwork. One is age-old bronze casting in a foundry in Greece. There they use the lost-wax method, mostly the same process employed by ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago.

The other is to metalize the work in the studio: I apply a shell of metal over the Thalia I have made, using ground bronze, brass, or other metals in a catalyzed resin. It looks and behaves like real metal because it is.

Applying Patinas

Adding color to a metal surface is something I love. I don’t mind clean, waxed bronze, but I prefer color and oxidization, as you can see on each of the Hellenic Heads.

If the piece was cast in bronze, I defer to a patineur to apply acids with a blowtorch. I will typically be present, advising on the process and adding pigments to achieve specific colors—for example, Tiffany blue. For metal-coated pieces, I apply the patinas and dyes myself, cold, in my studio.

Final Scan, Photography, Out into the World

By this point, many months have passed. Looking at Thalia in her final state, I feel pride and relief. She is ready to go out into the world, to do what she was designed to do: not merely decorate but be a palpable presence that engages people’s thoughts and emotions.

But not yet. We take a final scan for archival purposes and as the base for any future variations of Thalia. If time permits, she is professionally photographed for catalogs, websites, and social media. The art transport company comes, and she goes off to her own life—to communicate with visitors I will never meet. I have five more heads to go, so I turn to that.

Across three millennia, the Aegean and the Arabian Gulf have been maritime crossroads, situated on the same relatively small area of the globe. Greece is often linked to figural sculpture and naturalistic representation; Gulf cultures, especially after Islam, are renowned for calligraphy, geometry, and intricate patterns. Beneath these surface differences, however, lie similarities that extend beyond mere geography: formative mythologies, a focus on order and measure, ideals that structure public space, and the translation of collective memory into durable materials. Here we explore some key parallels from antiquity to the present.

Myth and Poetry

One of the most striking parallels between the two ancient cultures emerges in their respective mythologies and epic narratives. Poetry and oral traditions formed the bedrock of artistic expression in both regions, demonstrating a profound respect for language and its power to convey emotion, history, and wisdom.

Ancient Greek society was permeated by a rich pantheon of gods and goddesses, their heroic sagas recounted in Homeric epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey. These tales explored themes of destiny, honor, courage, and the often-fickle nature of divine intervention, shaping moral codes and providing explanations for the natural world. Similarly, pre-Islamic Arabian cultures, and later Islamic societies, developed intricate oral traditions populated by jinn, powerful heroes, and narratives of tribal conquests and moral dilemmas. The epic of Gilgamesh, originating in Mesopotamia, profoundly influenced subsequent narratives in the region, including elements that resonate with later Islamic storytelling. These oral traditions become reflected in more concrete artforms like sculpture, pottery and painting.

Climate, Materials, and Light

In both regions, the hot, dry summer seasons gave rise to innovative architectural solutions. In Greece, peristyle houses, courtyards, and porticoes temper heat with shade, cross-ventilation, and water. In the Gulf, coral-stone walls, inward-looking courts, mashrabiya screens, and wind towers (barjeel) choreograph air flow and shadow. These are not merely functional devices; they produce a poetics of light.

Chosen materials amplify this interplay with the natural climate: Greek marble, bronze, terracotta (with its now-eroded gilding and polychromy) converted sunlight into symbolic luster; the Gulf’s coral stone, stucco, carved wood, mother-of-pearl, and metalwork similarly draw attention to the light itself. The gloss of bronze in a Greek sanctuary finds an echo in the pearlescent inlay on Gulf chests or the shimmer of glazed tile. In both regions, the sea’s hard light becomes a material itself.

Order as Aesthetic

Greek statues and temples encode ratio, rhythm, and symmetry—they are the Pythagorean Theorem made visible. Gulf artistic systems crystallize order through geometry, pattern, and Qur’anic calligraphy, where repetition becomes meditation. One tradition privileges measured ideals; the other translates revelation into the visual logic of line and curve. Yet both aim at order and balance. Epigraphic Greek stelae and Islamic calligraphy— though different in theology and form—share a conviction that text is image and a vessel of memory. In each case, beauty is inseparable from an ethics of proportion: how things should be rightly related.

Civic Space and Hospitality

In both regions, public life is of great importance. The Greek agora and theater shaped discourse and debate; the Gulf souq, majlis, and Friday mosque organized counsel, exchange, and communal time. For centuries, performance has been central in both cultures: choral drama in one, oral poetry and recitation in the other. Here, art is a civic medium, not a private luxury. A votive statue or honorific stele in a Greek polis taught citizens what was esteemed, while a carved door, Qur’anic inscription, or geometric frieze in a Gulf mosque or merchant house did similar cultural work, binding community to shared values.

An attention to hospitality translates these values into spatial ethics. Greek domestic and civic settings choreograph arrival—a shaded approach, a cool court, a seat. Gulf houses and majlis formalize welcome through thresholds and seating hierarchies, with ritual offerings—water, coffee, bread—echoed in materials and motifs.

Contemporary Continuities and Technologies

In the present, both regions utilize historic culture to narrate identity. Greece highlights archaeological stewardship alongside a contemporary scene that converses with antiquity—a lineage of artists (including George Petrides) who quote ruins, rework fragments, or probe the politics of memory. Gulf nations have built cultural districts, biennials, and public-art programs, translating calligraphy, geometry, and oral histories into new monumental vocabularies. New commissions reprise ancient patronage with modern tools, like the public sculpture on display in hospitals, campuses, waterfronts, plazas, and transit hubs where daily life unfolds.

Toolsets have changed but the underlying ideals are familiar. Today’s sculptors and architects experiment with scanning, parametric design, CNC, casting, and large-format 3D printing while maintaining the haptic intelligence of clay, plaster, or carving. In both cultures, technology serves human communication and meaning.

In Conclusion

To trace parallels is not to erase differences. Greek art keeps human anatomy at the center even as it stretches toward the divine; Gulf art often privileges geometry and pattern as pathways to transcendence. Greek art and Gulf art histories follow distinct theologies and civic traditions. Yet taken together they reveal a shared coastal imagination: civilizations that prize story, balance, and civic belonging—and render those values in durable form. The future of public art in both places lies where it always has: in spaces where people meet and stories circulate.

You know by now that the Hellenic Heads are a series of six over-life-size heads that align six periods of Greek history with six members of my family (including me). These individuals represent four generations spanning more than a century: a grandmother who fled a burning city to land unwelcome in a new country; parents who came of age under the Nazi occupation of Greece and the ensuing civil war; a son (yours truly) who grew up in a household with these three individuals and absorbed some of the trauma they carried. Later, another individual, shaped by similar experiences in her own family, would join my family. Then, the fourth generation: a daughter for whom we all worked to create a new, easier life.

In psychological terms, generational trauma refers to the transmission of the psychological and emotional effects of extreme stress—war, displacement, oppression—from one generation to the next. This transmission can occur biologically, but more often it travels through silence, daily behavior, and what is considered normal in a household. Patterns that once served as survival tools—hypervigilance, emotional distance, strict control—can become burdens for descendants who inherit the fear without having lived the original threat.

This theme, as obvious as it may be to me now, was not obvious to me as I was making the six sculptures. Only well after they were on their way around the world did this become clear to me, and I started to see the making and presenting of the six Hellenic Heads as part of my own healing.

Across from the photography section of each Hellenic Head, I have some personal commentary regarding generational trauma and its heading as relates to that family member.

As the birthplace of many of the pillars of Western civilization, classical Greece may be the period most familiar to history students of all levels. Though major historical events like the Peloponnesian Wars, the Spartan and Theban hegemonies and the expansion of Macedonia were constantly reshaping its borders, the rich culture of Classical Greece was forming and strengthening.

Its legacy in the form of politics, art, science, theater, literature, and philosophy extended far beyond its time period and region to influence the culture of the Roman Empire, and become the very foundations of modern civilization, specifically in the West. This legacy was particularly instrumental in shaping the European Renaissance and the generations that followed it: “The legacy of Greece was strongly felt by post-Renaissance European elite, who saw themselves as the spiritual heirs of Greece. Will Durant wrote in 1939 that “excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture that does not come from Greece,” and conversely “there is nothing in Greek civilization that doesn’t illuminate our own.”

We have some clues as to what life was like for Greek citizens during the Classical era: “In Athens, society was male-dominated–only men could be citizens and only upper-class males enjoyed a formal education. Women had few political rights and were expected to remain in the home and bear children. Fully one quarter of the population was made up of slaves, usually prisoners captured during the many clashes that extended Greek influence overseas. These slaves provided much of the manpower that fueled the burgeoning economy, working in shipyards, quarries, mines, and as domestic servants.

“Most homes were modest, windowless and wrapped around a courtyard. Furniture was rare. People spent the majority of the day out of doors enjoying the mild Mediterranean climate. The Greek diet was also modest, based largely on wine and bread. A typical day would start with bread dipped in wine, the same for lunch and a dinner of wine, fruits, vegetables and fish. Consumption of meat was reserved for special occasions such as religious holidays.”

The women of Classical Greece had few rights compared to those of their male counterparts; for example, they could not vote or inherit land, and were thus largely relegated to the domestic sphere. And yet, despite the social restraints, there were a number of important female goddesses (Demeter, Artemis, Persephone, etc.) the likes of which were never available to Christian women. In particular, Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, is one of the most powerful figures in Greek mythology: “The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numerous other temples and monuments… She was also a warrior goddess, and was believed to lead soldiers into battle as Athena Promachos. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar.”

Classical Sculpture

In the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece, the Classical period covers most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC). The Classical period in this sense follows the Greek Dark Ages and Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period.

As for sculpture during this time, the Classical Period brought about “a revolution in Greek statuary, usually associated with the introduction of democracy and the end of the aristocratic culture...The Classical period saw changes in the style and function of sculpture. Poses became more naturalistic (see the Charioteer of Delphi for an example of the transition to more naturalistic sculpture), and the technical skill of Greek sculptors in depicting the human form in a variety of poses greatly increased. From about 500 BC statues began to depict real people. The statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton set up in Athens to mark the overthrow of the tyranny were said to be the first public monuments to actual people...

“In the Classical period for the first time we know the names of individual sculptors. Phidias oversaw the design and building of the Parthenon. Praxiteles made the female nude respectable for the first time in the Late Classical period (mid-4th century): his Aphrodite of Knidos, which survives in copies, was said by Pliny to be the greatest statue in the world.”

Another renowned sculptor of the time was Polykleitos of Argos, who was “particularly famous for formulating a system of proportions that achieved this artistic effect and allowed others to reproduce it. His treatise, the Canon, is now lost, but one of his most important sculptural works, the Diadoumenos, survives in numerous ancient marble copies of the bronze original. Bronze, valued for its tensile strength and lustrous beauty, became the preferred medium for freestanding statuary, although very few bronze originals of the fifth century BC survive. What we know of these famous sculptures comes primarily from ancient literature and later Roman copies in marble.”

The Muses

A group of goddesses that have had lasting cultural impact are the Muses. The Muses or “nine sisters” were the goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. Usually presented as the daughters of Zeus, they were thought to have allowed people to forget their pain. They played an important role in artistic life, but also in civic life: “When Pythagoras arrived at Croton, his first advice to the Crotoniates was to build a shrine to the Muses at the center of the city, to promote civic harmony and learning.”

Thalia was one of the two muses of the Greek theater. Her name means “flourishing,” perhaps because her songs were thought to sound new even as they aged.

The Muses were often portrayed in all manner of artworks, from literature to sculpture. “Ancient authors and some later authors and artists invoke Muses when writing poetry, hymns or epic history.” They were so prevalent in works of art that they have become embedded in the very idea of art and creativity; the word muse has come to represent an artist’s inspiration, and it is the root of the word museum.

For this first period, the Classical Greek period, I selected as sculptural precedent a piece that I had fallen in love with in Rome when I saw it at the Vatican Museums. This sculpture, Thalia, Muse of Comedy, was recovered from an excavated Roman villa near Tivoli and probably dates from the 2nd century. It resembles Greek models of the late fourth to early third century BCE, reminding us of Roman dependence on Greek originals. Many of the Greek originals have been lost and we now appreciate them through Roman period copies, such as this.

The sculpture depicts Thalia, the eighth born of the nine Muses. The villa where the sculpture was excavated in 1775 was initially thought to have belonged to Cassius, the foremost instigator of the murder of Julius Caesar, though this assessment has been more recently disputed. Thalia is typically portrayed in art as “a young woman with a joyous air, crowned with ivy, wearing boots and holding a comic mask in her hand. Many of her statues also hold a bugle and a trumpet (both used to support the actors’ voices in ancient comedy), or occasionally a shepherd’s staff or a wreath of ivy.”

I was inspired by the beauty and mood of this piece, and the details of the crown and hair which stood in contrast to the more simply defined face. As I started to make a version of it in my studio, without my intention or knowledge of it occurring, my sculpture took on the characteristics of my mother, specifically as a woman around twenty years of age from a black and white photograph taken in Athens in a garden, sitting and talking with a cousin. As I kept working on the piece, the only thing that remained of the Vatican Thalia was the crown and hairstyle; the features had changed to resemble my mother from that time and place.

The Byzantine Empire lasted for over 1,100 years from 330 to 1453. The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its Eastern regions after the fall of that empire. The moment of its greatest extent and strength was in the early days. However, it survived in some form until the fall of the capital city, Constantinople, currently called Istanbul, to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Though its citizens referred to themselves as Romans, it was heavily influenced by Greek culture and Greek, rather than Latin, was the official language.

The land on which modern Greece stands was an essential component of the Byzantine Empire: “Greece remained part of the relatively unified eastern half of the empire. Contrary to outdated visions of late antiquity, the Greek peninsula was most likely one of the most prosperous regions of the Roman and later the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. Older scenarios of poverty, depopulation, barbarian destruction and civil decay have been revised in light of recent archaeological discoveries… This view of extreme prosperity is widely accepted today, and it is assumed between the 4th and 7th centuries, Greece may have been one of the most economically active regions in the eastern Mediterranean. Following the loss of Alexandria and Antioch to the Arabs, Thessaloniki became the Byzantine Empire’s second largest city, called the co-regent, second only to Constantinople.”

Art of the Byzantine era is markedly different from that of ancient Greece: “Surviving Byzantine art is mostly religious and with exceptions at certain periods is highly conventionalised, following traditional models that translate carefully controlled church theology into artistic terms. Painting in fresco, illuminated manuscripts and on wood panel and, especially in earlier periods, mosaic were the main media, and figurative sculpture very rare except for small carved ivories. Manuscript painting preserved to the end some of the classical realist tradition that was missing in larger works. Byzantine art was highly prestigious and sought-after in Western Europe, where it maintained a continuous influence on medieval art until near the end of the period. This was especially so in Italy, where Byzantine styles persisted in modified form through the 12th century, and became formative influences on Italian Renaissance art. But few incoming influences affected the Byzantine style. With the expansion of the Eastern Orthodox church, Byzantine forms and styles spread throughout the Orthodox world and beyond.

“Influences from Byzantine architecture, particularly in religious buildings, can be found in diverse regions from Egypt and Arabia to Russia and Romania. Byzantine architecture is known for the use of domes, and pendentive architecture was invented in the Byzantine Empire. It also often featured marble columns, coffered ceilings and sumptuous decoration, including the extensive use of mosaics with golden backgrounds. The building material used by Byzantine architects was no longer marble, which was very appreciated by the Ancient Greeks. They used mostly stone and brick, and also thin alabaster sheets for windows.”

Constantine the Great

The reign of Constantine the Great marks the beginning of the Byzantine Empire and a major turning point in the history of the empire.

From Wikipedia: “Upon his ascension to emperor, Constantine enacted numerous reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation, he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The Roman army was reorganized to consist of mobile units (comitatenses) and garrison troops (limitanei), which were capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—such as the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths and the Sarmatians—and resettled territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century with citizens of Roman culture.”

Though he remains a controversial figure, Constantine has often been lauded for these achievements, both before and after his death: “During Constantine’s lifetime, Praxagoras of Athens and Libanius, pagan authors, showered Constantine with praise, presenting him as a paragon of virtue…During the Middle Ages, European and Near-East Byzantine writers presented Constantine as an ideal ruler, the standard against which any king or emperor could be measured.”

Perhaps his most lasting legacy is that Constantine legalized Christianity and removed the penalties under which many Christians had been previously martyred. “According to Christian writers, Constantine was over 40 when he finally declared himself a Christian, making it clear that he owed his successes to the protection of the Christian High God alone. Despite these declarations of being a Christian, he waited to be baptized on his deathbed, believing that the baptism would release him of any sins he committed in the course of carrying out his policies while emperor. He supported the Church financially, built basilicas, granted privileges to clergy (such as exemption from certain taxes), promoted Christians to high office, and returned property confiscated during the long period of persecution. His most famous building projects include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Old St. Peter’s Basilica. In constructing the Old St. Peter’s Basilica, Constantine went to great lengths to erect the basilica on top of St. Peter’s resting place, so much so that it even affected the design of the basilica, including the challenge of erecting it on the hill where St. Peter rested, making its complete construction time over 30 years from the date Constantine ordered it to be built.”

Christianity was preached on the Greek peninsula in the first century (by Saint Paul and others), but it was not until the era of Constantine that Christianity spread rapidly throughout what is now modern-day Greece. Under Constantine, Christianity evolved from being a fringe sect to being the central religion of the empire, and Eastern Orthodoxy is still by far the dominant religion of Greece. Up to 90% of Greek citizens identify as Christian, and the church is a major force in the cultural landscape, seen in traditions like holidays and name days. Salaries of Orthodox clergy are paid for by the state.

Though contemporary historians debate how Constantine individually felt about Christianity over the course of his life, the medieval Christian church held him up as an example of extreme virtue, and even today, the Eastern Orthodox Church considers Constantine a saint and an equal of the apostles.

For the Byzantine Empire, I found two heads, colossal heads of Constantine. The first of the heads is from the Colossus of Constantine, the surviving fragments of which are now housed by the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The remaining pieces were carved from white marble, while the rest of the body was made of brick and wood and possibly gilded, which was subsequently pillaged. According to Michael Grant: “Here was the man at whose court...writers felt it appropriate to speak of the ‘Divine Face’ and ‘Sacred Countenance’. The sculptor has conceived this countenance as a holy mask, an overpowering cult object resembling, though on a far greater scale, the icons of future Byzantium: an idol animated with the divine presence, and with the power to repel the demons lurking in pagan images.” The fragments include two different right hands, and according to Wikipedia, it is thought “that the statue was re-worked at some time late in Constantine’s reign and a hand holding a sceptre was replaced by a hand holding a Christian symbol.” The 8-foot tall head was perhaps meant to convey the other-worldly nature of the Emperor, notable in its enormous eyes which gaze toward eternity from the more typically rendered stiff face.

Another, marble head is held by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and probably also originated in Rome. According to the Met website, “the long face, neatly arranged hairstyle, and the clean-shaven appearance of this portrait head are a deliberate attempt to evoke memories of earlier rulers such as Trajan, who in the later third and fourth centuries was seen as an ideal example of a Roman emperor. Certainly, by the time that the head was set up, as part of either a bust or, more probably, an over life-sized statue, Constantine had adopted an official image that was intended to set him apart from his immediate predecessors.” As I worked on my version of the sculpture, I found that it took on characteristics of my father. The name, Archon, could be said to be a leader or a noble person and that is how I think of my father’s character. Sadly, he passed away in 2017, but I’ve captured, I think, some of his qualities in this work.

The Greek War of Independence, known to 19th century Greeks simply as “the Struggle,” was a war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire. Greece had been under Ottoman control for close to four centuries, since the fall of Constantinople, and all previous attempts at independence were unsuccessful.

According to Wikipedia, “in 1814, a secret organization called Filiki Eteria (Society of Friends) was founded with the aim of liberating Greece, encouraged by the revolutionary fervor gripping Europe in that period. The Filiki Eteria planned to launch revolts in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities, and Constantinople itself...The first revolt began on 6 March/21 February 1821 in the Danubian Principalities, but it was soon put down by the Ottomans. The events in the north urged the Greeks in the Peloponnese (Morea) into action and on 17 March 1821, the Maniots were first to declare war. In September 1821, the Greeks under the leadership of Theodoros Kolokotronis captured Tripolitsa. Revolts in Crete, Macedonia, and Central Greece broke out, but were eventually suppressed. Meanwhile, makeshift Greek fleets achieved success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea and prevented Ottoman reinforcements from arriving by sea.

“Tensions soon developed among different Greek factions, leading to two consecutive civil wars. The Ottoman Sultan called in his vassal Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who agreed to send his son Ibrahim Pasha to Greece with an army to suppress the revolt in return for territorial gains. Ibrahim landed in the Peloponnese in February 1825 and brought most of the peninsula under Egyptian control by the end of that year. The town of Missolonghi fell in April 1826 after a year-long siege by the Turks. Despite a failed invasion of Mani, Athens also fell and the revolution looked all but lost.

“At that point, the three Great powers—Russia, Britain, and France—decided to intervene, sending their naval squadrons to Greece in 1827. Following news that the combined Ottoman– Egyptian fleet was going to attack the island of Hydra, the allied European fleets intercepted the Ottoman navy at Navarino. After a tense week-long standoff, the Battle of Navarino led to the destruction of the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet and turned the tide in favor of the revolutionaries.

“The final major engagement of the war was the Battle of Petra in 1829, which occurred north of Attica. Greek forces under Demetrius Ypsilantis, for the first time trained to fight as a regular European army rather than as guerrilla bands, advanced against Aslan Bey’s forces and defeated them. The Turks surrendered all lands from Livadeia to the Spercheios River in exchange for safe passage out of Central Greece.”

The war, which raged for nine years, ultimately led to the formation of modern Greece, and the victory is celebrated by Greeks around the world as Independence Day on March 25.

The establishment of the Greek state would have vast implications:“The outcome of the Greek Revolution was the pivotal point on which the whole geopolitical map of Europe tilted, away from the 18th-century model of multi-ethnic, autocratically ruled empires and towards the 20th century model of the self-determination of nation-states.” This trend would continue throughout the 20th century, including the formation of the United Nations. Historian Mark Mazower would call it “Europe’s first successful national revolution, ultimately forcing kings and diplomats to change their entire approach to the management of the European peace.”

Female Leaders in “The Struggle”

I was fascinated by three women who had leadership roles in the Greek revolution. These women were not merely figureheads, but active participants on the frontlines.

Laskarina Bouboulina was a Greek naval commander, and perhaps the most well-known of the war heroines. Her childhood might hold some explanation of why she would one day become a force for Greek Independence: “Bouboulina was born in 1771 in Constantinople…She was the daughter of Stavrianos Pinotsis, a captain from Hydra island…The Ottomans had imprisoned Pinotsis for his part in the failed Orlov revolt of 1769– 1770 against the Ottoman rule shortly after the birth of his daughter. Her father died soon afterward and the mother and child returned to Hydra.”

She would eventually survive two husbands, the latter a wealthy captain and shipowner. She risked her fortune from her second husband to aid the cause of Greek Independence: “She later allegedly joined the Filiki Eteria secret society which sought to achieve Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, being among the few women to do so. Following the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence she commanded a fleet of Spetsiot ships which contributed to several campaigns, most notably the siege of Nafplion.

“Following the defeat of her faction in the Greek civil war in 1824, Bouboulina was briefly imprisoned and expelled to Spetses. She was killed on 22 May 1825, during the course of a family feud…A few days after her death, a Russian delegation presented her with the honorary rank of Admiral of the Russian Navy granted by Tsar Alexander I of Russia, making her perhaps the first woman in world naval history to hold this title. In 2018 she was granted the title of Rear Admiral in the Hellenic Navy.”

Manto Mavrogenous, another naval heroine, was a beautiful woman of aristocratic lineage, but her genteel background did not prevent her from leaping into action when necessary. “When the struggle began, she went to Mykonos, the island of her origin, and invited the leaders of Mykonos to join the revolution. She equipped, manned and “privateered” at her own expense, two ships with which she pursued the pirates who attacked Mykonos and other islands of Cyclades. On 22 October 1822, the Mykonians repulsed the Ottoman Turks, who had debarked on the island, under her leadership.” She also equipped 150 men to campaign in the Peloponnese and sent forces and financial support to Samos when the island was threatened by the Turks.

Her actions eventually made her a respected figure in European circles: “Mavrogenous led enlightenment expeditions in Europe and addressed an appeal to the women of Paris, to side up with the Greeks. She moved to Nafplio in 1823, in order to be in the core of the struggle…When the war ended Ioannis Kapodistrias awarded her the rank of the Lieutenant General and granted her a dwelling in Nafplio, where she moved.”

Domna Visvizi was a noblewoman of Thrace who, in the wake of her husband’s death in battle, immediately assumed command of their warship. “Visvizi took over command of the Kalomoira and its crew and continued to fight in the war. Visvizi was reportedly a skilled and respected naval commander and her ship instilled fear among the Ottoman fleet. The Kalomoira not only partook in battles but also at times transported food and ammunition, for instance supplying soldiers on Skiathos and the forces of Odysseas Androutsos on the mainland.

Androutsos later wrote that his forces would have perished without Visvizi’s aid.”

She is said to have proclaimed: “We do not regret spending money, since it will be used to build the golden palace of liberty.” However, she struggled under extreme financial hardship after the war and was repeatedly denied financial aid from the government. “In 1845, Visvizi moved to Piraeus in Athens, where she lived in a small hut next to the sea. She died in poverty in 1850 at the age of 67.”

For decades, historians underestimated the importance of all three of these war heroines. More recent reexaminations, however, have resulted in a better understanding of their pivotal roles in the war.

The Art Institute of Chicago is one of my favorite museums in the world. It is not as physically large as the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Louvre, however it has an encyclopedic collection with some of the best of of many kinds and periods of art. The Institute holds this sculpture by the French sculptor Cordier (1827–1905), who is best known for his ethnographic sculptures, many of them polychrome combining exotic stones and metals. To gather material for these works, Cordier traveled extensively outside France, creating lifelike busts for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. This piece, Saïd Abdullah, is the first ethnographic sculpture that he created. It is based on a former slave Cordier met in 1847, about the same time that slavery was abolished in all French colonies. The sculpture was well received in Paris; when it traveled to London, Queen Victoria bought a bronze cast.

Cordier argued that beauty belongs to every people, and that it should not be judged by resemblance to a privileged European ideal.

This piece made such a strong impression on me that when I was working on Heroines, it came to my mind. The pose as well as the unusual blouse and cap served as touchstones for me when I was working on Heroines. Notably many of my sculptures do not include clothing; however, in the case of Heroines I felt it appropriate to clothe the female model in traditional men’s military jacket and cap, acting as signifiers to the viewer of the role these brave leaders took in that war.

The 1920s brought a major influx of refugees to Greece, the majority of them from Asia Minor. The region had long been home to many Greek people, including communities of Cappadocian Greeks and Pontic Greeks that had inhabited the region since the 13th century BC. As the Ottoman Empire came to an end, areas of Asia Minor that had been home to tens of thousands of Greeks were annexed by Turkey, and the demographic makeup of many cities within the region were suddenly and inexorably altered. Many of the Orthodox Christians within what is now Turkey, including at least 900,000 people from Asia Minor alone, fled to resettle in mainland Greece, setting off a decade-long refugee crisis.

A major event in this refugee crisis was the destruction of the city Smyrna, which effectively ended the Greco-Turkish War. Prior to the fire, Smyrna was home to more Greek citizens than even Athens, the capital of Greece. It was, according to most accounts, a jewel of a city: “Smyrna was a city of a unique cosmopolitan character, full of European travelers and traders, especially during the last decades of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. Turks, Greeks, Jews and Armenians lived together in peace. The Greek community of the city was the largest in population and its members were highly esteemed professionals, working as bankers, traders, lawyers and doctors.”

But the city, as it existed in 1922, would not survive the war. As the city burned, tens of thousands of Greek and Armenian refugees crammed the waterfront to escape from the fire. They were forced to remain there under harsh conditions for nearly two weeks. The number of casualties from the fire is not precisely known; there are differing estimates, some of which place the number of Greeks and Armenians killed as high as 125,000.

Many firsthand accounts of the disaster survive, like this one from British Lieutenant A. S. Merrill: “All morning the glow and then the flames of burning Smyrna could be seen. We arrived about an hour before dawn and the scene was indescribable. The entire city was ablaze and the harbor was light as day. Thousands of homeless refugees were surging back and forth on the blistering quay–panic-stricken to the point of insanity. The heartrending shrieks of women and children were painful to hear. In a frenzy they would throw themselves into the water and some would reach the ship. To attempt to land a boat would have been disastrous. Several boats tried and were immediately stopped by the mad rush of a howling mob...The crowds along the quay beyond the fire were so thick and tried so desperately to close abreast the men-of-war anchorage that the masses in the stifling center could not escape except by sea. Fortunately there was a sea breeze and the quay wall never got hot enough to roast these unfortunate people alive, but the heat must have been terrific to have been felt in the ship 200 yards away. To add to the confusion, the packs belonging to these refugees – consisting mostly of carpets and clothing – caught fire, creating a chain of bonfires the length of the street.”

The fire completely destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters of the city, leading to thousands of people fleeing to Greece to seek safety and a new life. People who had enjoyed life in a cosmopolitan city were suddenly displaced. The famed Onassis family were among the refugees as was the family of my maternal grandmother.

Following the destruction of Smyrna and the end of the Greco-Turkish War, the two countries signed a peace pact in January 1923 in Lausanne, Switzerland. A major element of this treaty was the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, an attempt at social engineering that required Orthodox Christians to move to Greece and Muslims to move to Turkey, regardless of the language they spoke or the length of time they had been in their current country. The convention affected a vast number of people, an estimated 1.3 million immigrants to Greece and as many as 400,000 immigrants to Turkey. Consequently, both sides of this population exchange suffered traumatic effects. Professor Ayse Lahur Kirtunc, a Cretan Muslim expelled to Turkey stated in an interview: "Eighty years have passed, and the memories are warring with another, ripe for distortion. But the core of every migrant's statement remains the same. Birth in one place, growing old in another place. And feeling a stranger in the two places.”

Rebuilding a Life in Greece

Even those migrants from Asia Minor who managed to survive the journey to mainland Greece had a very difficult road ahead of them. Greece was already bearing a massive load of refugees, and the agreed-upon population exchange would further exacerbate issues of resettlement: "The deportations brought significant challenges: social, such as forcibly being removed from one's place of living, and more practical such as abandoning a well-developed family business…Regardless if they settled in urban or rural areas, the vast majority of the refugees arrived in Greece impoverished and often sickly, placing enormous demands on the Greek health care system.” During this period of upheaval, the death rate in refugee communities was four times that of the birth rate.

The United States was instrumental in providing aid to the refugees: “The lives of hundreds of thousands of Greek refugees from Asia Minor, Pontus, and Eastern Thrace were saved thanks to the humanitarian initiatives of American charitable organizations, mainly the American Red Cross and the Near East Relief. These two organizations practically single-handedly undertook the extremely difficult task of providing aid on the spot to Greek refugees who otherwise would have likely been condemned to death by diseases, malnutrition, and other hardships. The gravity of the situation demanded immediate and effective action and the United States was by far the first to respond to the Greek appeals for help. Sometimes the numbers speak for themselves even though they cannot always describe the splendor of philanthropy. The total cost of the relief work undertaken by the American Red Cross for the period from October 1922 to 30 June 1923 amounted to the astonishing $2,605,696.09.”

Despite the initial hurdles, the refugee community would eventually bring much to the economy of Greece by their presence there: “The arrival of the Asia Minor Greeks resulted in the rise of the agricultural production of the state by 400%. The arable land increased by 55%. The Nikolaos Plastiras Government decided on February 14, 1923 to further divide the arable land of Greece, in order for the refugees and their descendants to be the owners of their own land…New industries were established in short time by the skilled refugee population (e.g. carpet industries). In addition, many of them later became successful ship-owners (e.g. Aristotle Onassis).”

Beyond economics, the refugees enriched the cultural landscape of Greece: “New liberal ideas arrived along with the refugees, especially those coming from Smyrna. The influence of the refugees was particularly important in the cultural field.” From the blending of the already existing Greek population with the population of refugees, a new Greek culture was forged, which is still familiar to us today. Important elements of Greek cultural identity like iconic dances (zeibekiko and haspiko) and a cuisine rich in eggplants, tomatoes and spices have their roots in Asia Minor.

Notably, the nation’s most popular sport, soccer, landed in Greece largely because of the refugee population. Some football clubs, like Apollon Smyrnis and Panionios (Greece’s oldest F.C) were transplanted directly from their original homes in Asia Minor. Others, like the popular AEK in Athens and PAOK in Thessaloniki were originally founded by former members of Pera in Constantinople.

It must be acknowledged, however, that these developments were silver linings to what was undoubtedly a period of extreme hardship for over a million people. Because of the scale of the tragedy almost every contemporary Greek family has some historical connection to what many still call The Catastrophe. The Greek writer Dimitris Pentzopoulos wrote, “It is no exaggeration to call the year 1922 the most calamitous in modern Hellenic history.”

I have long been astounded by - and sought to learn from - the genius of Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475–1564). That one human being would excel in so many different fields (drawing, sculpture, painting, architecture, poetry - he was even an astute businessman) can only be described as genius. In addition to studying the lectures of William Wallace, the exhibitions of Carmen Bambach, the novel of Irving Stone (and entertaining movie that came out of it), I have been fortunate to experience his sculpture, painting and architecture in person. As a sculptural precedent for The Refugee, given that the first name of my maternal Grandmother - who was a refugee from Smyrna - was Maria, I was drawn to the three Pietà sculptures made by Il Divino over the course of six decades: the Madonna della Pietà (1498–1499) in Rome; the four-figure Deposition of Christ (1547–1555) in Florence and the Rondanini Pietà (1552–1564) in Milan. Each can be said to have served as a sculptural precedent for The Refugee, however, I will single out the Rondanini.

Wikipedia: “The Rondanini Pietà was begun before The Deposition of Christ was completed in 1555. In his dying days, Michelangelo hacked at the marble block until only the dismembered right arm of Christ survived from the sculpture as originally conceived. The elongated Virgin and Christ are a departure from the idealised figures that exemplified the sculptor's earlier style… The unfinished quality of the work fits with Michelangelo's late progress away from naturalism and humanism and toward a mystical Neoplatonism, in which he conceived of a sculpture as latent in the marble and requiring merely the removal of superfluous material; in this manner, he seems to have deprived his human symbols of corporeal quality in an attempt to convey directly a purely spiritual idea.”

In addition to the expression of the Virgin Mary, I was drawn to the rough texture that Michelangelo left over the whole surface of the large sculpture. Did he leave it this way because he “ran out of time” or was this intentional? Wikipedia: “It has also been suggested that the sculpture should not be considered unfinished, but a work in a continuous process of being made visible by the viewer as he or she moves around to see it from multiple angles.”

The Nazi Occupation

On 6 April 1941, German forces invaded Greece after the failed Italian attack of October 1940. The Hellenic Army had pushed Italian troops back into Albania, but the German Blitzkrieg, launched while Greek units were still committed on that front, quickly broke through the country’s defenses. Within weeks the mainland had fallen; by June 1941, after the Battle of Crete, the occupation was complete. The Greek government fled into exile, while Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria divided the country into zones and installed a collaborationist administration in Athens.

The occupation quickly devastated Greece’s economy and infrastructure. Industrial capacity, transport networks, and shipping were ruined; large parts of industry, bridges, ports, and railway facilities were destroyed or rendered unusable. At the same time, German and Italian authorities requisitioned food and raw materials, imposed a forced “occupation loan” on the Greek state, and prioritized their own supply needs over the survival of local civilians.

These policies helped trigger the Great Famine of 1941–43. Axis requisitions, disruption of internal transport, collapse of domestic production, and the British naval blockade meant that cities and islands were cut off from food supplies. In Athens and Piraeus alone, tens of thousands died of starvation; nationwide, hundreds of thousands perished. Malnutrition, disease, and the black market defined everyday life.

Terror and repression were as central to occupation policy as economic plunder. German, Italian, and Bulgarian forces used hostages, executions, and village burnings to enforce “collective responsibility,” punishing communities for real or suspected resistance. Tens of thousands of civilians were executed and hundreds of villages destroyed or abandoned. Massacres at Kalavryta (1943) and Distomo (1944), where whole communities were killed in reprisal, became enduring symbols of Nazi brutality and are now commemorated as “martyred towns and villages.”

The occupation also brought the near-destruction of Greek Jewry. Before the war, roughly 75,000–80,000 Jews lived in Greece, with the largest community in Thessaloniki, a major Sephardic center. In 1943, the German authorities deported almost the entire Jewish population of Thessaloniki—around 50,000 people—to Auschwitz-Birkenau; very few survived. Smaller communities in places like Ioannina, Rhodes, and Kos were also largely annihilated. In total, well over four-fifths of the prewar Jewish population of Greece perished in the Holocaust.

There were, however, pockets of rescue and solidarity. Some Christian families, local networks, and clergy helped to hide Jews or facilitate their escape to the mountains or to territories still under Italian control. In Athens, Archbishop Damaskinos and elements of the resistance movement assisted Jews in obtaining false papers and reaching safer areas. These efforts, while limited compared to the scale of destruction, remain an important part of the moral landscape of the occupation.

Resistance emerged early and took many forms. Isolated acts of defiance soon grew into organized movements, especially in mountainous regions where guerrilla warfare was easier. The largest resistance front, the National Liberation Front (EAM) with its armed wing ELAS, combined military struggle with a program of liberation and social reform. Other groups included EDES, closer to the British and the exiled government, and smaller formations such as EKKA. Youth organizations like EPON mobilized students and young workers through underground newspapers and sabotage.

Cretan resistance is often highlighted for its ferocity; during and after the Battle of Crete civilians attacked German paratroopers with improvised weapons, and local andartes (guerrillas) kept up resistance for years, forcing the occupiers to devote considerable resources to the island. At the same time, prison camps such as Chaidari near Athens and execution grounds like the Kaisariani rifle range, together with collaborationist Security Battalions backed by the Germans, became synonymous with torture, reprisals, and civil strife.

By the time German forces began withdrawing in late 1944, a significant percentage of the population was dead, infrastructure and industry lay in ruins, and social relations had been deeply marked by occupation, resistance, and collaboration. Liberation did not bring immediate peace, but rather opened a new and violent chapter.

The Greek Civil War

The resistance landscape that had formed under the occupation contained serious ideological and political fractures. EAM–ELAS, dominated by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), had become the largest and most effective resistance force in much of the country. EDES and other groups, aligned more closely with the exiled government and the British, often clashed with EAM– ELAS even before the Germans left.

After liberation in October 1944, a national unity government under George Papandreou attempted to integrate the resistance forces and restore order. Disputes over disarmament, the army, and the political direction of the country quickly escalated. In December 1944, tensions exploded in Athens in the Dekemvriana (“December Events”), when a mass pro-EAM demonstration was fired upon, leading to dozens of deaths and weeks of street fighting between ELAS and British-backed government forces, with British troops intervening directly in the capital.

The Varkiza Agreement of February 1945 formally ended the Dekemvriana. EAM–ELAS agreed to disarm in exchange for promises of amnesty and political freedoms. In practice, however, the disarmament of the left was not matched by effective restraint on right-wing groups, many of which included former collaborators. The period that followed, often called the “White Terror,” saw systematic persecution of former resistance fighters and left-leaning citizens through arrests, beatings, murders, and dismissals from public employment. This cycle of retaliation and fear helped lay the groundwork for renewed armed conflict.

The Greek Civil War is usually dated 1946–49. Government forces, backed first by Britain and later by the United States under the Truman Doctrine, faced the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), linked to the KKE and drawing many cadres from former ELAS fighters and mountain communities shaped by occupation and post-Varkiza repression. The conflict combined an internal struggle over Greece’s political future with the emerging logic of the Cold War.

For rural peasants, the civil war often meant being trapped between two armed camps. When guerrillas entered a village seeking food, recruits, or shelter, villagers risked punishment if they cooperated—and suspicion if they refused. When government troops or right-wing militias arrived later, those same villagers could be denounced as communist sympathizers, facing imprisonment, exile, or worse. In some regions, whole villages were evacuated to deny resources to the insurgents, uprooting long-established communities.

The prison island of Makronisos became a powerful symbol of this era. Used as a military prison and “re-education” camp, it held thousands of political prisoners, including former resistance fighters, intellectuals, and conscripts suspected of leftist sympathies. Torture, forced “confessions,” and attempts at ideological conversion were common.

The civil war ended in 1949 with the defeat of the DSE. Several factors contributed to the outcome: the superior material resources and air power of the government, American military and economic assistance, the split between Tito’s Yugoslavia and Stalin’s Soviet Union (which disrupted the guerrillas’ supply lines), and the deep exhaustion of a population that had endured nearly a decade of crisis. Greece soon joined NATO, aligning firmly with the Western bloc.

The cost, however, was immense. Beyond the casualties of battle, there were widespread executions, imprisonment, forced migrations, and the long-term silencing of memories. Emergency laws remained in place for decades, and open discussion of the divisions and atrocities of the 1940s was often avoided in the name of “national unity.” The combined experience of Nazi occupation and civil war left deep marks on Greek society, shaping family histories, political identities, and cultural memory well into the present.

Rodin being one of my favorite sculptors, I have studied his work ever since my days at Stanford in the early 1990s. I was well acquainted with The Burghers of Calais, and for this project, I focused on the Head of Pierre de Wissant.

According to Wikipedia, “In 1346, England’s Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais, while Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege, and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender”.

“The contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart (ca. 1337 – ca. 1405) tells a story of what happened next: Edward offered to spare the people of the city if six of its leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first, and five other burghers joined him. Saint Pierre led this envoy of volunteers to the city gates. It was this moment, and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice, and willingness to face imminent death that Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.” Rodin made “two models and one study of Pierre de Wissant before the final sculpture. The first model shows the young man pointing to himself with the right hand, as if questioning his final destination. In the nude study he is no longer pointing to himself, but using his arm in a defensive manner.”

I also drew on tales I had heard from my parents, who were teenagers in the 1940s in Greece, as well as my own reading about the period. I wanted to capture not the official headlines of the generals and the battles but rather the experience of the everyday Greek civilian: The privation, the famine, and the horror of that decade, played out in personal history.

From the devastation of war and occupation, Greece entered the second half of the twentieth century focused on reconstruction and re-establishing its place in a changing world. Cities and villages bore visible damage, infrastructure was fragile, and many families had been separated or bereaved, yet daily life resumed quickly. In the decades that followed, the country experienced rebuilding and outward migration, dictatorship and the restoration of democracy, integration into European institutions, rapid modernization, economic crisis and recovery, and new roles at the intersection of regional and global developments. Across these shifts, Greek society repeatedly showed an ability to adapt, reform institutions, and invest in future generations.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, reconstruction was visible across the country. Roads and railways were repaired or extended, electricity and telephone networks expanded, and ports and airports were upgraded. Urban centres such as Athens and Thessaloniki saw new apartment blocks and public facilities alter skylines and daily routines. In rural areas, agriculture gradually mechanised, and access to schooling and healthcare improved. Poverty and inequality persisted, but key indicators moved upward: literacy increased, life expectancy rose, and a growing share of young people entered secondary and higher education. A generation that had come of age in war now directed its efforts toward stability and new opportunities for its children.

At the same time, many Greeks sought prospects abroad. From the 1950s onward, hundreds of thousands left for Western Europe, North America, Australia, and other destinations as workers, students, and emigrants. Remittances supported families and local economies, while Greek communities overseas maintained close ties to the homeland. Neighbourhoods, churches, and associations abroad became extensions of village and city life. This outward movement eased pressures on the domestic labour market and created a dispersed but interconnected population whose experience would shape Greek society in subsequent decades.

Political life in the same period combined reform with tension. The 1960s brought expectations of modernization alongside intense polarization, culminating in the 1967 seizure of power by a military junta. Civil liberties were suspended, opponents were exiled or imprisoned, and public expression came under close control. Yet civic and cultural life did not disappear. Students, artists, journalists, and other citizens worked, often at personal risk, to preserve memory and independent thought. When the dictatorship collapsed in 1974, the experience of repression strengthened the commitment to open debate and constitutional procedures and prepared the ground for a more durable democratic order.

The transition known as Metapolitefsi marked a decisive turning point. A new Constitution reaffirmed political freedoms and the rule of law, parties reorganised, and exiles returned. Parliamentary life stabilised, and peaceful transfers of power became routine. The state expanded education, healthcare, and social protection, while new social actors—women’s groups, youth movements, professional associations—entered public discussion. Political competition now took place within a firmly democratic framework, and trust in key institutions deepened as courts, universities, and independent media consolidated their roles.

European integration provided a further framework. Association with the European Communities and full membership in 1981 brought investment in infrastructure, agriculture, and regional development and encouraged legal and administrative reform. It facilitated mobility for students, researchers, and workers and connected Greek public debate to broader European discussions. Europe functioned both as a set of practical arrangements—affecting trade, migration, and regulation— and as a reference point for rights and standards. Within this environment, cultural life was notably active. Literature, music, cinema, theatre, and the visual arts addressed both the legacies of the past and the changes of the present, while archaeological research and museum projects deepened knowledge of the ancient and Byzantine past and tourism brought these heritages into sustained contact with visitors from abroad.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were characterised by accelerated modernization. Economic growth increased, new enterprises were founded, and urban areas saw improvements in transport, telecommunications, and public amenities. The decision to host the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens concentrated these trends. The Games drove the construction and renovation of sports facilities, the expansion of metro and tram lines, major road projects, and upgrades to airport and urban services, while offering a visible platform for contemporary Greek architecture, design, and performance.

The global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath posed a severe test. The 2010s brought pronounced economic contraction, high unemployment, and intense debate about debt, reform, and social cohesion. Once again, many young people left for opportunities abroad, reviving long-standing patterns of mobility. At the same time, new forms of initiative appeared: cooperative ventures, social solidarity structures, start-ups, and cultural projects emerged alongside established businesses. Public institutions undertook difficult reforms. By the end of the decade, macroeconomic indicators had improved and a more sustainable fiscal framework was in place, even as the social impact of the crisis continued to be addressed.

In these same years, Greece was positioned at the forefront of wider regional developments. Conflicts and instability in neighbouring areas brought large numbers of refugees and migrants across the Aegean and into mainland Greece. Local communities, volunteers, non-governmental organisations, and public authorities organised reception and support under often challenging circumstances. The widely circulated images—of island shores, temporary camps, and rescue operations—were underpinned by numerous acts of routine assistance and cooperation that became part of the country’s contemporary self-understanding.

The COVID-19 pandemic added another layer of pressure. As elsewhere, authorities and citizens faced the dual task of protecting public health and maintaining social and economic activity. Health professionals and administrators reorganised services, while schools, universities, and workplaces shifted rapidly to remote operation where possible. The period accelerated digitalisation in both public administration and the private sector and reinforced the perceived importance of resilient health systems, clear public communication, and mutual support.

In the early twenty-first century, Greece continues to balance continuity and change. Traditional pillars of the economy—tourism, shipping, and agriculture—remain central, while sectors such as information technology, renewable energy, logistics, and the creative industries are expanding. Universities and research centres participate in international networks, and members of the diaspora contribute through collaborations, investment, and periodic return. Urban districts and rural areas alike have become sites of experiment, where small enterprises, cultural initiatives, and local associations reshape everyday environments.

The challenges ahead include demographic trends, climate change, regional tensions, and the ongoing task of strengthening institutions and broadening opportunity. Greece confronts these issues with resources built over decades: democratic practice, European and regional partnerships, dense cultural capital, and a proven capacity for recovery after crisis. The generation now coming of age inherits memories of hardship alongside concrete examples of resilience, collective organisation, and innovation.

From 1950 to 2025, the trajectory of modern Greece can be seen as one of repeated rebuilding and adjustment: after war and occupation, reconstruction; after dictatorship, a consolidated democracy; after economic crisis, institutional reform and renewed initiative. Within this context, Kore in Hellenic Heads stands for the present oriented toward the future: a figure formed by a century of experience yet facing forward, suggesting how the gains and lessons of this period can be carried into the decades to come.

For the final sculpture in this 2,500-year journey, representing Modern Greece (1950-2025) I selected a sculptural precedent I first encountered during childhood visits to the old Acropolis Museum (on the Acropolis itself) with my aunt Emmanuela, an archaeological guide. Decades later, I reconnected with this piece, Kore 684, at the new Acropolis Museum which opened in 2009, including with the intention of receiving the Parthenon Marbles which are being held at the British Museum in London, UK.

Kore 684 depicts a maiden, dated to approximately 500 BC. The statue is understood to be a votive offering dedicated to the goddess Athena, originally placed on the Acropolis near the Parthenon. With the Persian invasion of 480 BC, it was buried by the returning Athenians in a ceremonial clearing of the sacred site. This "Perserschutt" (Persian debris) became a time capsule, preserving it and dozens of other sculptures until their rediscovery during excavations in the late 19th century.

This statue is a prime example of the korai (maidens), a hallmark of the Archaic Period (c. 600–480 BC) and the female counterparts to the nude kouroi (youths). Korai are always depicted clothed, displaying formal, upright postures, intricate clothing, and stylized hair. Traces of vibrant polychromy (color) are still visible on this one and many others, proving they were not originally white marble. A defining feature is the "Archaic smile," an artistic convention deemed to signify divine grace and vitality rather than a specific human emotion. Other notable korai are housed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and the Louvre.

With this wonderful sculpture as my precedent, I asked my daughter, Sofia, then 12 years old, to pose. My sculpture, Kore, incorporates the enigmatic smile with my daughter's characteristics. It is the only sculpture in the Hellenic Heads series that looks upward. I hope this piece conveys the optimism that a young person may feel for her future, and that a nation and its people may feel for theirs.