ID

Dear readers,

Turtle bridges the personal and political, memory with identity. In order to understand this project, it is important that I tell you more about myself: I am the fourth child of a Greek family with Turkish heritage. When the events of the Asia Minor Catastrophe took place in the early 20th century, my ancestors were forced to abandon Turkey 1 and seek refuge in Lesvos, an island in the northeast of the Aegean Sea, across the Turkish borders. Unfortunately my great grandmother didn’t make it; refusing to leave her home in Turkey, she stayed behind and went missing.

Both my parents were born and grew up in Lesvos. When they married, they opened a bakery at the Port Pireus. They were running a good business, when the Greek military occupation started in the late sixties, so they decided to leave Greece and start a new life in Australia, joining the long line of Greek “exiles”. I was born in Port Lincoln, South Australia.2 Soon after my family relocated to Adelaide, where I went to public school with my other three siblings. 

In 1981, my parents Athena and Achilles -named after the protagonists of Homer’s Iliad- having lived their own personal trojan war in Australia, decided to return to Greece with their children. Was this a result of homesickness or was it a desperate move to save their marriage? I will never know. But their decision coincided with significant times for their own country.

In 1981 a strong earthquake hit the capital of Greece, but metaphorically speaking the political scene had also been shaken: Greece entered the European Union under the liberal government of Konstandinos Karamanlis and a few months later the socialist leader Andreas Papandreou came to power- I still remember the cheerful faces, the honking and the flags with the green sun3 waving victoriously out of the windows of the small athenian cars.

Coming to live in Athens was quite a cultural shock: apart from the different mentality and the bizarre political behaviour of the Greek people, I felt sad being surrounded by so much cement; there isn’t much free space and green parks in comparison to Australia. Only, until this point, I realise the true meanings of the words displacement and dislocation. Nobody had prepared me at such a young age for the heartbreak of losing a country and the sentimental difficulties of getting a new one. So, it was then I was authored the Greek citizenship and became officially in papers a Christian Orthodox. 

I went to the Polycladic Lyceum of Athens, a high school that looked like a prison from the outside, but had a good reputation as a progressive educational structure  – one of Polycladic’s students was Alexis Tsipras, the ex Prime-minister of Greece, the left politician who nearly led the country to its exodus from the European Union. Instead of the ‘Grexit’, the ‘Brexit’ happened in February 2020. To be frank, it seems like the whole idea of the E.U. is falling apart.

In 1990, I passed the certificate leave and entered the Panteion University of Social & Political Sciences, where I  studied “Communication, Media & Culture”. Under the exchange student programme Erasmus I enrolled for one semester at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, where I studied French, Cinema and Music Communication.

On the turn of the millennial, I applied for a Master of Arts in Documentary Research at the London College of Communication (formerly the London College of Printing), University of the Arts London. I was able to study abroad thanks to the scholarship “Lychnos” which I was awarded from the Journalist Union ESIEA (whom I am a member since 20-12-1999). 

I first started working as a journalist in the Arts Department of the well-established Greek newspaper Kathimerini. Over time, I have collaborated with many major Greek and foreign media, including ERT (the Greek National Television), DW, ITN London, Channel 5 UK, ORF, ARTE e.t.c.

In April of 2018, I lost my job. I decided then to take a career break and pursue my dream to study fine arts. A few months later, I enrolled for the MA in Digital Arts at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Here is my art resume.

Journalist, documentarist and digital artist. I’ll add another title: I am a single mother, which I consider one of the hardest jobs on earth, especially if that woman lives in the Greece. In order to take care of my two kids, I founded this newsroom named “Chelona”.4

If you ask me what are my strong points, I would definitely say my honesty, my intuition, my different views on things, my observation of the given, my humour, my outspokenness (well, all Aussies are considered outspoken), as well as my boldness and combativeness. I fight for what I believe in and I try making all my ideas come true, no matter how crazy they could seem to others.

Nowadays, – with the climate crisis, the huge immigration problems, the new technologies invading every sector of life, the globalisation side effects and the rise of authoritarian and alt-right regimes in the Western world-, we need bold journalism and radical art that will fight injustice, and reconsider the importance of social rights and the need for a new humanity. So, as a professional in the field of media and culture, but also as a parent, I feel the urge more than ever to protect the future of our children. At these critical times we need to slow down and think what is important to us. 

Thank you for time,

Helen Vrontis
Foundress & Director of The Turtle

Portrait by Andreas Simopoulos ©2014


Notes

  1. Greeks lived in Istanbul and the coasts of Turkey from ancient times.
  2. The name that appears on my birth certificate is Helen Vrontis, but my original name is Ελένη Βροντή. If my Greek name would be pronounced properly in English it should be written like this: Helėne Brontė (brontē derives from the Greek word βροντή which means “thunder”).
  3. Andreas Papandreou founded the political party P.A.S.O.K whose logo was a rising green sun.
  4. Τhe epistemological name of ‘turtle’ derives from the greek word ‘χελώνα’.