Lissa Barnum: 'Upside of Passing' 2025

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Upside of Passing is a collection of the visual works of Mexican born artist, Lissa Barnum. It's an irreverent telling of memories and connections - of departed pets, deeply loved humans and nature's irrevocable cycles.

Culturally, the work touches on Mexican-flavoured rituals; a preparation for, and in conversation with, the process of death, dying and what remains. For those who have experience loss, sorrow should not be the only inhabitant of our spirit. Instead, humour and joy can infuse suffering with promise.

The images express death using well-known euphemisms and descriptive language prompting detours into other well-known semiotic/visual expressions. Following the Mexican tradition, bright colours are used as fundamental to the representations. In Anglo terms, the over-use and appropriated totems say of 'Day of the Dead,' tend to dilute the gravity of life and death passings.

By not employing over-borrowed iterations, the depiction of death as 'cross-cultural ideation' is playful, impactful, resonant, as well as melancholic and solemn.