Balloon 2 (ふうせん２)

Fūsen, "balloon," carries somatic resonance for an artist who has spoken of her childhood heart surgery — the inflated membrane echoing the lung, the cardiac chamber, the body's pneumatic interior. As the second iteration in a series, the print likely refines or varies a motif worked in an earlier plate, a common practice in Murakami's serial etching method. The 2018 date places it among the work where she began combining etching with aquatint and spit-bite to introduce dense blacks and atmospheric gradients impossible in line alone. The balloon as subject lends itself to the tonal modulation aquatint affords, where rosin-grain bite produces continuous tone. The image sits within her broader figural vocabulary linking child-body fragility to inflated, fragile, breath-filled forms. Small in scale and intimate in address, the print rewards close inspection of plate texture and the depth of acid bite across its surface.