Resilience Chicago

The National Hellenic Museum (NHM) in Chicago’s Greektown neighborhood celebrated its grand public reopening in September 2022 with the world premiere of a major photography exhibition, Resilience by HRH Prince Nikolaos,

An accomplished photographer who has exhibited his work internationally since 2015, Prince Nikolaos presented 19 new works as part of the NHM exhibition, exploring Greece’s strong relationship with nature including the olive tree, grapevines and the sea. The exhibition also feature the North American premiere of Together, an immersive scene of life-size illuminated, embracing olive trees accompanied by sounds of Greek nature, which first premiered at the London Design Biennale in 2021.

Greece’s past, present and future is intertwined and inextricably linked with nature. The recent pandemic has changed how we view the physical world and our space within it and has forced us to go back to our origins to find inspiration. A central piece of the Resilience exhibition was a photographic mosaic titled Sea Cred, created by Prince Nikolaos in collaboration with nonprofit environmental organization Parley for the Oceans, to raise awareness of the plastic pollution of our oceans and bodies. The artwork is divided and printed onto 272 credit cards made of Parley Ocean Plastic®, upcycled ocean plastic debris from remote beaches, mangroves and coastal communities. Sea Cred is inspired by the fact that humans could be consuming an average of 5 grams of plastic every week, the equivalent weight of a credit card, according to a 2019 University of Newcastle study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund.

Curated by Marilena Koutsoukou