SD: I first applied to the Hydra Art Residency two years ago and received no answer. Last year, I followed up with a new project inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation. My intention was to begin with a small group of approximately eight island residents, creating still-life photographs that would reflect the relationships between individuals and the objects, spaces, and belongings that hold personal significance to the people living on Hydra.

EJ: Mnemosyne Projects art residencies are a close collaboration between an artist and a curator. Stefan arrived on Hydra a few days before me and was hosted here at the Old Carpet Factory, which provided an ideal opportunity to meet an initial group of local residents through introductions facilitated by Stephan Colloredo-Mansfeld. By the time I arrived on the island, I found Stefan in the midst of an agitated discussion centered around an apparently impossible question: Who is a true Hydriot? Every person he met during his first days on the island seemed to hold a firm conviction about who belonged and who did not. Belonging became a central theme in our project.

SD: It was evident that Hydra exists as a field of competing realities, each fiercely protected. In an attempt to make sense of the situation, I decided to construct my own definition of belonging by asking a broader question: Who really belongs? On my long walks around the island, I started photographing native plants and animals. They are the ones who really belong here, I thought. But the conclusion of my explorations was paradoxical: everybody and nobody belongs.

Certain conditions must be present for a sense of belonging to emerge. On my way here, for example, I found myself thinking about trust. I landed on the island 30 minutes before the talk began, which gave me enough time to leave all my belonging at the port with some person I had never met, but who was a friend of an Hydra friend.  This made me feel like I started to belong here in some way.

But belonging is more complex. It also requires recognition, reciprocity, participation, care, and time. Perhaps it begins when we feel recognized by a place or a community, but it deepens when we accept responsibility for it in return.

EJ: The body of work Stefan created during his residency is a visual essay composed of borrowed possessions temporarily displaced from their owners and scattered across the island. In some of his photographs, we encounter native plants alongside discarded plastic objects, as well as landscapes marked by traces of human presence. It is often easy to distinguish imported objects from those originating on Hydra, but once removed from their original contexts, their provenance becomes less certain: all have been transformed, to some degree, by use and time.

Detached from their owners, the belongings in Stefan’s photographs are difficult to situate within a specific context. To me, this mirrors the unsettled and fluid nature of identity itself. Through his deliberate misalignment of objects and places, Stefan’s work suggests that belonging is inherently unstable and continuously reshaped by those who pass through the island as well as those who remain.

Marilia, when we first met, the question of belonging immediately emerged as you introduced your project at Bellevalia. How did this idea enter your practice, and in what ways has it guided your work on Hydra?

ML: My relationship with Hydra was formed through my work. When I was invited by the Rabies family to help with the restoration of their century-old Hydriot building, the significance of the experience was less in the project itself. The invitation itself 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, I encountered life beyond the familiar images of Hydra's summer season. It included maintenance, repair, stewardship, and care. These observations focused my attention less on the question of who belongs to Hydra and more on the how is belonging sustained? Part of my practice restoring historical properties, an in  particular at Bellevalia, requires removing some parts and adding new parts of the building without disrupting the sense of belonging.

The reasons Stefan Dotter’s project resonates so strongly with me is because his 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: At first glance, one might argue that belonging is less about origin and more about participation. There is certainly truth in that. 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 commit themselves to them over time.

ML: Hydra demonstrates this remarkably well. The island we encounter today is not the Hydra of a century ago, nor even of a generation ago. It has continuously adapted to new social, economic, and cultural realities. Yet despite these transformations, it retains a powerful sense of itself.

ML: 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.

EJ: Before we conclude, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this conversation and to the realization of Belonging(s). We will present six limited-edition prints from the project tomorrow at Bellevalia Olive Grove. Thank you for joining us.