Belonging(s)
Mnemosyne Projects is pleased to present Belonging(s), a new body of work by photographer Stefan Dotter, developed during his residency at the Old Carpet Factory and supported by Bellevalia Olive Grove Residency, Hydra.
Hydra Island, Greece - The project will launch on June 21, 2026 with an artist talk at the Old Carpet Factory, followed by the release of limited edition prints on June 22, 2026 at Bellevalia Hydra.
Upon arriving on Hydra, Dotter set out to portray the island’s inhabitants through their personal belongings, seeking a material language capable of reflecting both place and identity. He quickly encountered a fundamental question: Who is a true Hydriot? Each individual he met held a firm and often conflicting conviction about who belongs and who does not. This tension became the central axis of the project.
Belonging(s) reveals Hydra as a landscape of competing realities, where ideas of belonging are continuously asserted and contested. Faced with these contradictions, Dotter arrives at a paradoxical conclusion: both everybody and nobody belong. In this way, belonging emerges as fluid, unstable, and perpetually renegotiated.
The work takes the form of a visual essay composed of borrowed and displaced possessions—objects removed from their owners and scattered across the island. Native plants coexist with plastic debris, imported items sit beside local ones, and traces of human presence merge with the natural environment. Detached from their original contexts, these objects resist clear attribution, mirroring the shifting nature of identity itself.
Through this subtle misalignment of objects and place, Belonging(s) proposes that belonging is not fixed, but continuously shaped by those who pass through, remain, and lay claim to Hydra.
Contact
For press inquiries, additional information, or event details, please contact Mnemosyne Projects.
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