Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency Inaugural Dinner
During Deste Art Week, when visitors from across the international art community fill the island, Mnemosyne Projects and Bellevalia Hydra hosted a dinner to introduce the Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency and to celebrate its inaugural resident. Gathered beneath the olive trees of a historic Hydriot family estate, artists, curators, and friends came together for an evening whose true subject was Hydra itself.
The Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency is rooted in the belief that a place reveals itself slowly, through attention and time. Set within an olive grove near Plakes and hosted by a Hydriot family whose connection to the land stretches back several generations, the residency invites artists to experience Hydra's car-free lifestyle as temporary islanders living at the slow pace that has drawn creative minds here for decades.
Unlike many residencies, the program does not feel like institutional cultural programming. Instead, it offers artists a way into the local community, allowing them to listen, observe, and respond through their own imagination. In this sense, the residency positions itself as a lived encounter with the grove, the sea, the island, and the people who continue to preserve what makes Hydra unique.
Photographer Stefan Dotter, inaugural artist in residence at Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency on Hydra Island.
This year’s resident artist, Stefan Dotter, presented a preview of a photographic series developed during his April 2026 residency on Hydra. His visual investigation became the starting point for a broader project on belonging, connection, and the invisible networks that shape our sense of place. Inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation, Dotter began by looking at the relationships that structure community life, with Hydra serving as the first site of inquiry.
Rather than working from a predetermined list of subjects, he allowed the series to unfold through the island’s own patterns of trust and familiarity. Beginning with a small group of residents, Dotter asked each person to lead him to another, creating a chain of introductions that revealed connections across generations, professions, friendships, and local histories.
Bellevalia's Olive Grove.
Photographer Stefan Dotter, inaugural artist in residence at Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency on Hydra Island.
Photographer Stefan Dotter, inaugural artist in residence at Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency on Hydra Island.
Photographer Stefan Dotter, inaugural artist in residence at Bellevalia Olive Grove Art Residency on Hydra Island.
The photographs focus on objects, spaces, and personal belongings, not as decorative still lifes, but as traces of memory, attachment, and identity. On Hydra, these images became a way of considering how people locate themselves within a community: through what they keep, inherit, use, and remember.
Dotter’s body of work, together with his reflections on island life, inspired this year’s theme, Belonging(s), which brought together Mnemosyne Projects, the Bellevalia family, the local community, and an international circle of artists, curators, and friends. Before the dinner, Dotter presented the project at the Old Carpet Factory, where the conversation turned to the particularities of Hydra: its social fabric, its rhythms, and the quiet ways in which belonging is formed.
While rooted in Hydra, Dotter’s thesis remains in development and extends beyond the island. The project asks how belonging is formed anywhere, through relationships, possessions, memory, and the quiet ties that connect people to one another and to the places they call home. He plans to present the full project next year, with its final form and location still taking shape.
Diane Alexandre presenting White Goddess (2023) and Birds #2 (2023) as part of the exhibition Vessels.
Curator Micaela Giovannotti stands beside Woman Shape (2024), a work by artist Nadiia Shapoval.
The resulting body of work took the form of a visual essay composed of borrowed possessions: objects temporarily displaced from their owners and scattered across Hydra's landscape. Native plants coexist with discarded plastic by-products, traces of human presence merge with the natural environment, and imported objects sit alongside those originating on the island, each transformed through use, care, and time.
Removed from their original contexts, these belongings resist clear attribution, mirroring the unsettled nature of identity itself. Through this deliberate misalignment of objects and places, BELONGING(S) proposes that belonging is inherently unstable and continuously shaped by those who pass through, remain, or lay claim to the island.
Guests looking at Dragons (2026) by artist Dana Aviv
Bad Dreams Jars (2025) by artist Zen Du at Bellevalia's Olive Grove as part of Vessels exhibition.
As the sun set and guests gathered around the communal table, the inaugural dinner embodied the spirit of the residency: fostering dialogue between artists, local communities, and the unique cultural and ecological environment of Hydra.
The evening marked not only the beginning of Stefan Dotter's residency but also the start of a new chapter for Bellevalia Hydra and Mnemosyne Projects. Through future residencies, exhibitions, and public programs, the initiative aims to create opportunities for artists to engage deeply with the island and contribute to its evolving cultural landscape.
Architect Marilia Lezou
As the sun set and guests gathered around the communal table, the inaugural dinner embodied the spirit of the residency: fostering dialogue between artists, local communities, and the unique cultural and ecological environment of Hydra.
The evening marked not only the beginning of Stefan Dotter's residency but also the start of a new chapter for Bellevalia Hydra and Mnemosyne Projects. Through future residencies, exhibitions, and public programs, the initiative aims to create opportunities for artists to engage deeply with the island and contribute to its evolving cultural landscape.
Art critic Timothee Chaillou with artists Dana Aviv and Dianne Alexandre
Photo Credits: Douglas Martin Eveleigh
Location: Bellevalia Olive Grove, Hydra, Greece
Hosted by: Mnemosyne Projects & Bellevalia Hydra with support from the Old Carpet Factory
Event Planning: Ventus Events
Wine by: Vassaltis Vinyards
Special Thanks to: Grigoris Rampias and Rampias family, Katerina Trikon & Dimitris Markantonis, Stephan Colloredo Mansfeld.