NOSTOS: an exhibition of home, memory, migration and belonging
City Gallery at Joe Riley Waterfront Park will present NOSTOS: an exhibition of home, memory, migration and belonging, featuring Charleston artists Vassiliki Falkehag and Susan C. Gregory. The exhibition is on view November 20, 2026 through January 24, 2027. A free opening reception will be held on Friday, November 20, from 5 to 7 PM. An artists’ lecture is planned for Sunday, January 17 at 2pm. The gallery is free and open to all.
Taking its name from the Greek word nostos, or homecoming, the exhibition is an American odyssey through objects and landscape that explores home, memory, migration and belonging. More than 45 works of installation, encaustic, mixed-media painting, sculpture and printmaking bring a sense of place into focus through the ancestral and the contemporary, tracing the weight of memory and the evolving meaning of home.
Moving between generations and geographies, Falkehag and Gregory draw on their Greek American experiences and family histories of migration from Hellenic origins to the American Lowcountry. Their work considers how heritage is carried, transformed and reimagined as we come to belong.
Falkehag and Gregory are friends in art and life. Their families settled in Charleston during the 20th century, having left Greece in search of geo-political refuge and academic and economic opportunity. Through handed-down tales, research and their own involvement, both know how prevalent the Hellenic community became, and remains, in the Holy City. From the early 1900s onward, Greek families began new lives in America with homes and businesses throughout the King Street corridor and the East Side, West Side, North Central and Hampton Park neighborhoods.
The artists also share an experience of Kavala, Greece. Falkehag attended an art residency there at the Swedish House in the 1990s. In 2024, Gregory spent three weeks at the Eutopia Art Residency in Kavala, where she made a pilgrimage to that same building and sent recent images to her friend back in Charleston. Letters passed between them digitally and through the mail, and Gregory returned home with Greek plastic bags and orange seeds for Falkehag’s artwork. That ongoing exchange left the two artists feeling connected to each other, and to that place and time, in ways that carry into this exhibition.
Falkehag, an eco-artist, builds this body of work on past memory, present action and future imagination. She monoprints discarded remnants, immortalizing the objects she collects. In NOSTOS she creates installations from found water bottles and other discarded plastic, which are ubiquitous in Greece, and water is a strong and pervasive elemental theme throughout the show. Family story enters the exhibition through her mother’s hand-woven blanket, and lemon trees and dandelion plants appear across her prints, sculpture and installations.
“Perhaps Nostos is not simply about a return to a place but a search to understand the origins that continue to shape us. An investigation of home and belonging rather than longing to return. … When Susan gave me a grapevine as we began this project, I was moved by its beautiful form and also by what it revealed to me. How deeply the nature that shaped me is still a part of who I am. Working with it opened a path of discovery not of an idealized past, but toward a deeper understanding of how my origins remain present in my life, continually reshaping my sense of home and my understanding of where I belong,” said Falkehag.
Gregory creates interpretive landscapes that layer images of her grandmother’s domestic and beauty items and kitchen tools into a horizon of the mind. Her encaustic and mixed-media works use collaged transfers of the photographed items, and several paintings include rubbings of linens her grandmother embroidered by hand. Found objects, natural and man-made, enter the compositions, including restaurant plastic, street oranges, sidewalk poppies, jasmine and oleander. Her large works grew from small paintings made during her 2024 residency, derived from her walks in Kavala and bridging that place with her childhood memories.
“Vassiliki and I were instant friends. … in a familial way because of our shared heritage. Hers is more closely derived and raw, having left Athens as a girl. You can feel the poetry of longing in her work. … Mine is more romanticized, I feel, with the sentimentality of my childhood years. It’s a tribute of gratitude to my family, especially my grandmother Sophie with her, sometimes coarse, unconditional love. … NOSTOS acknowledges a broader human connectedness. We all are seeking to feel safe and loved at home,” said Gregory.
In NOSTOS, each artist’s work links the two women, their family stories and the public’s broader American experience.
About the Artists
Vassiliki Falkehag is a Greek American eco-artist born in Athens, Greece, who has lived and worked between Greece, Sweden and Charleston, where she is now based. She studied studio art and art history at the College of Charleston (1978–1982) and was a head teacher at Örebro Art College in Örebro, Sweden (2000–2009). She works across installation, printmaking and sculpture, and central to her work are single-use plastics set side by side with natural materials such as soil and living plants. Past projects include The Living Room at the Atlanta Contemporary (1995), Eutopia Örebro OpenArt (2009), Changing Index at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston (2017), Plasticity at Cannon Street Arts Center (2025) and Tethered Bloom at the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale in Gongju, South Korea (2025).
Susan C. Gregory is a painter, ceramicist and community studio founder in Charleston. Born in Augusta, Georgia, and raised in South Carolina, she earned a B.F.A. in painting and ceramics from Western Carolina University and has worked primarily in encaustic since studying it at Penland School in 2009. She co-founded Cone 10 Studios (2005–2019) and founded and directs Studio Union, a communal art studio in the Neck of the Charleston peninsula. Her recent exhibitions include Southern Futurisms at the Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University (2023) and Shapers at the James Island Cultural Center (2024). Her current series derives inspiration while walking, often honoring her North Central neighborhood. Learn more at susangregoryart.com.
2026 Invited Artists
Invited artists this year include: Brittany Alston, Carlos Bilal, Chris Bilton, Tyler Blanton, Chelsey Bradley, Eric Bridges, Colleen Cannon-Karlos, Heather Conyers, Tanya Craig, John Daso, Ty Davis, Benjamin Egelson, Linda Elksnin, Harriet Forbes, Ayanna Gadsden, Timothy Green, Raven Greene, Monique Gross, Kenish Harmon, Malik Hayward, Karyn Healey, Joanna Henry, Kirsten Hoving, Damion Johnson, John W. Jones, Celeste Joye, Ben Kelly, Rodney King, Tamala Leighfield, Flavia Lovatelli, Tiana Lynaé, Robert Maniscalco, Titus Marques, Akua Page, Quincy Pugh, Shamsad Rahman, Najee Reese, Kevin Russell, Caroline Rust, Willis Sanders, Pascale Sexton, Tessa Spencer, Tatiana Tatum, LaToya Thompson, Julia Vanderpool, Tina Vincent, Roginia Watson, Sabrina White, and Julian Williams.
