The attachments we form shape our experience of the world and our understanding of who we are. ‘Hell is other people,’ wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, his point being less about misanthropy and more about how entwined our self-perception is with the ways in which others perceive us. And alongside our personal relationships – from filial to friendship, from collegiate to romantic – sit the complex emotional connections we form with places, ideas and objects.  

How do we navigate these varying attachments, and what can they offer us when our lives are so mediated by technology? Can we break free of the tropes and traps associated with our most primal relationships: the social expectations of motherhood, the burdens of filial duty, the complexities of infidelity? 

Attachment Styles goes far beyond the family tree to consider the pleasures, pitfalls and peculiarities of our messy human relations.  

Cover image: Juan Ford, Astrophage 2021, oil on linen, 90 x 75cm, courtesy of the artist.