Community & Culture
Book Launch | Conversation on Refugee Experience, Memory & Material Culture
To mark the publication of Clothes and Textiles of Anatolian Greek Refugees: Embodied Memories on Display, author and curator Eleni Chasioti will be joined in conversation by Lorna Eleonora Vassiliades writer and performer of The Suitcase: Losing Famagusta for an intimate discussion on refugee experience as lived reality and inherited memory.
Rather than a traditional book launch, this event centers on dialogue bringing together personal testimony and intergenerational reflection. While Lorna speaks from direct lived experience of displacement, Eleni explores the topic through family memory, historical research, and material culture, exploring how refugee experiences endure across generations, even when not personally lived.
Together, they will reflect on belonging, loss, resilience, and the ways everyday objects, clothing, and storytelling carry memory across borders and generations. The conversation will open space for thoughtful engagement with migration and forced migration as deeply human conditions that shape identities and communities.
The event will include audience Q&A and informal discussion.
Copies of Clothes and Textiles of Anatolian Greek Refugees: Embodied Memories on Display will be available for purchase on the day.
Doors open at 6:30pm.
Admission is free, but booking via Eventbrite is required.
What can clothing and textile artefacts tell us about the identities, experiences, and resilience of displaced Anatolian Greek communities, and how can we maintain intercultural memory?
Escaping the coast of Asia Minor, over one million Anatolian Greeks sought refuge in Greek territory before, during, and after the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), endangering their memories and cultural heritage. Examining the clothing people chose to bring with them such as wedding dresses, and the textile trades they developed, including rug weaving, Clothes and Textiles of Anatolian Greek Refugees aims to shed light on complex historical events and deepen our understanding of the people in this post-conflict society.
Author Eleni Chasioti further highlights the significant role of contemporary museum collections that collect and preserve items in relation to forced migration as catalysts for maintaining intercultural memory and showing a path to healing and progression.
The book is published by Lived Places Publishing: https://livedplacespublishing.com/book/isbn/9781916985452.
