At the heart of UQ’s major exhibition "ΝΟΣΤΟΙ | Homecomings: Stories of the Ionian Island Diaspora in Queensland" is a simple but powerful proposition.
That migration history isn’t only preserved in official records, it lives in kitchens, in family trunks, in photographs, and in the words people are finally ready to say out loud.
Running from 2025 to 2027 at RD Milns Antiquities Museum, the exhibition brings together more than 80 objects, documents, garments and photographs, paired with newly recorded oral histories, built through a three-year, community-led collaboration with Ionian diaspora organisations in Queensland.
One of the community curators is second-generation Greek-Australian artist Chrys Zantis, who spoke with SBS Greek about why this project mattered, what it revealed, and what it felt like to see private family memory become public history.
Zantis begins with the exhibition’s title, nostos, a word often translated as “return”, but one she describes as far more expansive.
Zantis recalls first hearing about the exhibition at a community meeting at the Greek Club in Brisbane.
Her response was immediate, part artistic interest, part moral urgency.
Visitors will also encounter Zantis’ personal photographs from the late 1970s, images that now appear as part of the exhibition’s visual language.
She explains that in 1978, she spent a year in Greece, moving through seasons and everyday cycles, photographing life on Kythera.
In her view, the exhibition speaks to a universal pattern: the push and pull between the place you came from and the place you build your life.
*The exhibition is hosted at UQ’s RD Milns Antiquities Museum (St Lucia campus). The museum lists regular opening hours as Mon – Tue 9:30 am–2:00 pm and Wed – Fri 9:30 am – 4:30 pm, with selected weekend openings published on its site
