Mourning Proved Impossible (2024)

Seventy photo prints together form the palm tree from the garden of Lopulissa’s Moluccan grandfather. Lopulissa, who has Turkish and Moluccan roots, placed personal family objects on the prints before spraying them with bleach. These objects shielded parts of the image, leaving behind both recognizable as mysterious silhouettes — ranging from his grandfather’s glove to more abstract forms. The use of bleach evokes the metaphor of whitewashing: erasing painful histories while simultaneously making visible what must not disappear. By damaging and reassembling the prints, Lopulissa explores his personal “in-between state” (life between cultures) and shows how memories continue to surface, fade, and persist.