Artist Talk: The Paradox of Belonging and the Fragility of Attachment
The talk “The Paradox of Belonging and the Fragility of Attachment” at the Old Carpet Factory on June 21, 2026 brought together photography, curatorial practice, and architecture in the discussion about individual and collective perceptions of belonging and how they are shaped through memory, spatial experiences, image-making, and the emotional landscapes we inhabit. The different disciplines reflect on the ways we construct, negotiate, and reimagine connections to objects, environments and people in an increasingly fluid world.
How do we come to belong and what happens when the attachments become fragile, contested, or transformed? The ongoing interdisciplinary discussion between photographer Stefan Dotter, curator Ekaterina Juskowski, and architect Marilia Lezou explores the complex relationship between place, identity, and personal belongings as forms of attachment.
SD: I first applied to the Hydra Art Residency two years ago and received no answer. Last year I followed up with the idea to do a project exploring the social fabric of Hydra through a network of personal connections, inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation. My idea was to begin with a small group of approximately eight island residents,creating still-life photographs that reflect the relationship between individuals and the objects, spaces, and belongings that hold personal significance.
Rather than working from a fixed list of participants, my idea was to invite a few people and then ask them to recommend someone else from the community, allowing the project to expand organically through chains of trust, familiarity, and local knowledge. This approach would allow me to map the island's unique web of relationships and also reveal hidden connections across generations, professions, social circles, etc.
I imagined the resulting body of work to function as both a portrait of individuals and a collective portrait of the island. But things didn't go exactly as we had planned.
EJ: The Hydra Art Residency functions as a curator and artist collaboration. Stefan arrived to Hydra a few days before me. He was hosted at the Old Carpet Factory, which presented a great opportunity to meet the core group of locals to start the project with through the introduction to Stephan Colloredo-mansfeld’s network. Almost immediately, he encountered challenges. By the time I arrived to the island he was in the midst of a agitated discussion dealing with an impossible question: Who is a true Hydriot? Each person he met in the first day on the island held a firm conviction about who belonged and who didn’t. Belonging emerged as a central theme in his project.
SD: It became evident that Hydra exists as a field of competing realities, each fiercely protected. I attempted to construct my own definition of belonging by asking a wider question: “Who really belongs?” The paradoxical conclusion was: everybody and nobody.
EJ: Through our discussions belonging revealed itself as fluid, contested, and perpetually renegotiated. The resulting body of work Stefan created took the form of a visual essay composed of borrowed possessions: objects temporarily displaced from their owners and scattered across the island. We can see native plants coexisting with discarded plastic byproducts, traces of human presence bleed into the landscape, and imported objects sit beside those originating on Hydra, all transformed through use, care, and time. Removed from their original contexts, these belongings resist clear attribution, mirroring the unsettled nature of identity itself. In this misalignment of objects and places, BELONGING(S) proposes that belonging is inherently unstable and is continuously shaped by those who pass through, remain, or lay claim to the island.
ML: My relationship with Hydra emerged through architecture when I was invited by the Rabies family to work on the restoration of their century-old Hydriot building.The significance of the experience was in the invitation, rather than in the project itself. The invitation represented an act of trust and an opportunity to engage with one of the island’s most intimate forms of belonging.
Working on Hydra during the winter months revealed an island that differs from its familiar seasonal image. Beyond the summer narratives, I encountered the rhythms of everyday life: maintenance, repair, stewardship, and care. These observations gradually shifted my attention away from the question of who belongs to Hydra and toward a different question altogether: how is belonging sustained?
This is one of the reasons Stefan Dotter’s project resonates so strongly with me. Through the displacement of personal possessions from their owners and their redistribution
throughout the landscape, Belonging(s) challenges our assumptions about identity and attachment. Removed from their original contexts, the objects become difficult to classify. They remain connected to their origins while simultaneously acquiring new meanings through their placement within the island.
The work raises a compelling question: If an object is displaced is it still representative of its place of origin / how potent is it with ingredients pure and original of its mother. As an architect, I find this question deeply relevant because it can be extended beyond objects to buildings, places, and even people.
ML: Can something remain connected to its origins once removed from the context that produced it? Or does belonging emerge through participation in a larger network of relationships? At first glance, one might argue that belonging is less about origin and more about participation.
There is much truth in this. Places are shaped not only by those who were born there, but also by those who care for them, contribute to them, maintain them, and engage with them over time.
Yet participation alone is not enough. Participation becomes meaningful when it is accompanied by responsibility, stewardship, and attention. My own understanding of Hydra emerged through the responsibility of working on a building entrusted to me by local people. Through that experience, I came to appreciate a quality that I believe sits at the centre of both architecture and belonging: resilience.
Resilience is often understood in environmental or structural terms, but it can also describe a cultural condition. It is the capacity of a place to absorb change while maintaining continuity with its values,memories, and identity. Hydra demonstrates this remarkably well.
Its buildings have endured because they have been continuously occupied, repaired, adapted, and cared for. Their resilience lies in their ability to evolve while remaining connected to the place from which they emerged.
This understanding has shaped my own architectural thinking. When architects ask what allows a building to belong, the answers often begin with tangible qualities: orientation, climate response, local materiality, craftsmanship, scale, topography, and urban
Association. Yet these characteristics alone are insufficient. Buildings also belong through intangible conditions: memory, ritual, occupation, maintenance,collective knowledge, and time.
Like the objects in Stefan’s photographs, they are transformed through use, care, and time, the ingredients of belonging, they are then displaced, against foreign to them landscapes. One could suggest that belonging is not achieved through imitation but through attention, or an attentive dialogue with what already exists.
This brings us to the relationship between the part and the whole. Gestalt theory proposes that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. Hydra’s identity cannot be located in a single building, object, resident, visitor, or landscape. Rather, it emerges from the relationships between them. At the same time, understanding the whole often requires studying the parts. Architecture frequently isolates buildings from their contexts in order to understand the conditions that produced them. Similarly, Stefan’s displaced objects become fragments through which the island itself can be read. By separating objects from their owners and familiar surroundings, the project allows us to perceive them differently. The fragment becomes a lens through which the larger condition is revealed.
The isolated object reveals the context. The individual belonging reveals the larger condition of belonging. Ultimately, my experience on Hydra led me away from questions of authenticity and ownership and toward questions of participation, care, resilience and one’s capacity to take it all in.
As someone who arrived on the island through an invitation, I cannot claim belonging as a status. What I can speak about is the experience of being entrusted with a fragment. Through that act of trust, and through the resilience embodied in the people, buildings, and practices I encountered, I came to understand that belonging is not something one possesses.
Belonging is not a status that one possesses; it is a relationship that one continuously negotiates through care, attention, and participation.
Perhaps this is why the question of who truly belongs to Hydra remains impossible to answer. The island is continuously shaped by those who inherit it, care for it, transform it, pass through it, and leave traces behind. Its belonging, like its belongings, remains open, resilient, and perpetually in the making.
