Piggyback Ride (おんぶ)

Onbu, the act of carrying a child on one's back, is a culturally specific gesture of caretaking common in Japanese domestic life. For Murakami, whose practice draws on early childhood medical experience, such intimate body-to-body contact carries weight beyond genre depiction. The etching likely depicts two figures locked in the carrying posture — one body bearing another, weight transferred across the spine. The 2018 date suggests Murakami's combined intaglio approach: etched contour describing the figures' silhouettes alongside aquatint or spit-bite shading their volumes. The print belongs to her sustained engagement with figures whose somatic relationships register physical dependency, support, and the residue of illness or recovery. The small format and tonal restraint typical of her plates focus attention on the carved marks and the bodily geometry they describe — the curve of a back, the press of arms, the bracketed volume of two bodies briefly fused.