Belonging(s)

Belonging(s) is a photographic project by Stefan Dotter that examines identity, ownership, and the contested idea of belonging on Hydra Island. Through the temporary displacement of borrowed possessions across the island, Dotter unsettles the boundaries between object, owner, place, and origin. Removed from their familiar contexts, these belongings become ambiguous markers of presence and attachment. The series suggests that belonging is never fixed, but continuously shaped by movement, memory, and claims to place.

Introduction by Ekaterina Juskowski: "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."

Stefan Dotter (b. 1993, Bamberg, Germany) is a visual artist and photographer whose work spans fine‑art, documentary, and fashion. His practice is grounded in a minimalist poetic visual language shaped by his long engagement with Japan, where he currently lives and works. His photography has been commissioned by leading fashion houses including Chanel, Hermès, Issey Miyake, and Loewe, and has appeared in major publications such as the British Journal of Photography, The New York Times, and Vogue. In 2025, he published his first monograph, RECORD, documenting natural environments and indigenous communities in the Amazon, Borneo, and Madagascar.

Dotter has worked extensively with the United Nations, teaching photography to students in Afghanistan between 2019 and 2020 and later spearheading an international effort with 100 photographers to help evacuate those students in 2021. His work has been exhibited in Tokyo, Paris, London, and other global art centers, and he continues to build a cross‑cultural practice rooted in observation, restraint, and refined aesthetics.

Website: stefandotter.com

Mnemosyne is a research-driven arts organization and intellectual leadership platform founded in 2024 on the Greek island of Hydra. Rooted in the study of memory, place, and cultural identity, it advances a new model for how art can function in society. Mnemosyne rejects the notions of contemporary art as an object of contemplation or entertainment, and treats it as catalyst for inquiry, preservation, dialogue, and future-oriented thinking.

Drawing on Hydra’s extraordinary artistic legacy, Mnemosyne brings together artists, writers, musicians, curators, architects, scholars, and cultural leaders to examine how histories are constructed, inherited, contested, and transformed across communities and generations. Through exhibitions, publications, residencies, public programs, site-specific fieldwork, and new commissions, the organization creates interdisciplinary platforms that connect artistic practice with intellectual inquiry and civic imagination.

At its core, Mnemosyne Projects is committed to cultural preservation and activation. It treats heritage as a disappearing practice of being in the world that can be reinterpreted through contemporary art, mobilized through public dialogue, and transformed into a framework for sustainable cultural stewardship. By connecting local histories to global questions, Mnemosyne reshapes how we think about the role of art in building more reflective, connected, and imaginative societies.

With Belonging(s) Mnemosyne presents Stefan Dotter’s new photographic body of work as part of its ongoing exploration. The project reflects the organization’s broader mission to position art as a form of knowledge production capable of revealing the invisible structures that shape the self through the idea of belonging.

Artist Talk: The Paradox of Belonging and Fragility of Attachment
Date: June 21, 2026
Old Carpet Factory
Hydra Island, Greece
Time: TBD
RSVP: hello@mnemosyneprojects.org

Private Reception: Belonging(s)
Date: TBD
Bellevalia, Hydra
Hydra Island, Greece
Time: TBD
RSVP: hello@mnemosyneprojects.org