Girl with Balloon depicts a young girl reaching for a heart-shaped balloon, just out of her grasp. Like most Banksy’s works, the image is an ambiguous one fraught with emotive interpretations—some see the girl as losing the balloon, while others see her as on the verge of catching it—it is a symbol of hope, love, and freedom. The balloon is an archetypal symbol of childhood and freedom many of us connect with. More than a simple child’s toy, it evokes the fragility of what it stands for innocence, dreams, hope and love.

Banksy originally produced Girl with Balloon as a mural in the early 2000’s with the most famous being in London’s Southbank, though this no longer remains there. In 2018, a framed copy of the work was shredded after being sold at auction by way of a mechanical device Banksy had hidden inside the frame. Banksy confirmed that he was responsible for the shredding and gave the altered piece a new name, Love is in the Bin. The work was later sold for a record-breaking £18.5 million with Sotheby’s calling the work "the first in history ever created during a live auction."