Flying Balloon Girl, also known as Balloon Debate, is a 2005 stencil mural in the West Bank by the graffiti artist Banksy, depicting a young girl holding a bunch of seven balloons floating above the 8 meter-high wall built around the Palestinian enclave near the Qalandia checkpoint.[1][2]
Flying Balloon Girl | |
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![]() Original mural on the West Bank wall in 2006 | |
Artist | Banksy |
Year | 2005 (2005) |
It represents perhaps the first piece of West Bank Wall graffiti art to have received international acclaim, serving as a form of "transnational and experiential empathy".[3] In its original context, the artwork is thought to refer to the Palestinian right to freedom of movement and possibly to the Palestinian right of return.[4]
It has been described as: "poignantly simple", with its message "as basic as the artwork: through magic realism and notions of childhood innocence, the young girl embodies a dreamy, supernatural hope as the balloons lift her up from her stark surroundings."[5] As such its message has become universal, as John Lennon, associate professor of English at the University of South Florida, describes:[5]
As an image alone, though, there is of course no connection between this girl and the Palestinian desire to return. Instead, Flying Balloon Girl represents a universal desire to magically escape life's difficulties. A decade after Banksy placed the stencil on the Separation Wall, his image has become not a statement on Palestinian rights but a familiar image of the Banksy brand... Flying Balloon Girl's reproducibility as a universal symbol of hope places it on a similar plane as an inspirational cat poster; people derive meaning and pleasure from the image, but the work's aura as historically situated is weakened.
Flying Balloon Girl could speak to a transcendent desire to return to a time when no barriers separated Palestinians from their former land.
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