Fanakapan’s 'Balloon-Graff' Floats Off the Walls
Written by Emma Riva
Published on May 11th, 2026
It’s easy to imagine a stray gust of wind blowing the holographic helium away into the ether. But Fanakapan’s murals are there to stay, just like Fanakapan himself. He’s now one of Europe’s most recognizable street artists, with a distinctive style and a unique joie de vivre he brings to his craft.
As an artist, Fanakapan is self-taught. Spending his childhood and adolescence around Weymouth, Bournemouth, and Bristol, all small cities in the south of England. Though the north of England is the moody landscape that inspired the likes of Wuthering Heights and The Smiths, the south has a different character—vacationers cycle in and out of resort towns like Weymouth, but the sea keeps crashing along the coastline all year. There’s something of that sensibility in Fanakapan’s work, a mix of celebration and melancholy and an awareness that good times are often manufactured.
“I always get a bit wary when I’m enjoying something too much,” he said, recalling 2018 as one of his best painting years. He was doing back-to-back murals and felt that the depression that has sometimes followed him was waning. These days, he’s looking forward to doing mural festivals, but has turned much of his energy to working in his studio and renovating a home in Brighton, the coastal city where he now lives, not far from where he grew up.
One of Fanakapan’s first exposures to street art during his childhood was through reading Bizarre, a hardcore magazine with images of men with full-body tattoos swallowing snakes.
One of Fanakapan’s first exposures to street art during his childhood was through reading Bizarre, a hardcore magazine with images of men with full-body tattoos swallowing snakes. “In the back it had a triple X magazine section, nude ladies—That’s why young guys were buying it. But I saw that there was a Banksy stencil in the magazine. My girlfriend’s mum threw it away anyway, though,” he remembered. He had always seen and enjoyed street art and had done some tagging, but he didn’t know much about stencils. Stencil-making requires a degree of precision and multiple layers to it, but part of what attracted him to it was that on a big enough scale, you could get away with making a mistake.
From there, Fanakapan went on to London where he worked as a prop-maker for Nickelodeon shows. It was a rough-and-tumble starving artist life, but it allowed him to hone his craft. “I worked for free and used to get behind people in the turnstile on the Tube,” he remembered. He used his experience tagging to do mock-graffiti for the set of the show Victorious. Viewers can still see it on the lockers in the background of the fictional Hollywood Arts high school today.
Fanakapan’s signature style came out of a serendipitous request, though. “The first time I did balloons it because my friend was getting married and the theme of the wedding was ‘ducks and dogs.’ I did a balloon dog, a hot dog, and a real dog, and the balloon dog popped the best,” he said. His friend, fellow graffiti writer Tyza, saw his balloon dog suggested he do a balloon alphabet.
He fell in love with the process after that and changed up his tag and his personal brand. His mother used to call his sister “Fanny Fanakapan,” and he just liked the sound of the word, so he went with It as an artist name. (Previously, he was tagging TRIPE, based on his grandfather exclaiming “What a load of tripe.”) But now, he doesn’t need a tag to be recognized—it’s his style that stands out.
The balloons have a shimmering effect that he achieves with chrome, and he tries to paint on sunny days so he can see how the light will bounce off the image.
The balloons have a shimmering effect that he achieves with chrome, and he tries to paint on sunny days so he can see how the light will bounce off the image. He sticks gaffer tape on the walls to make sure he gets clean lines, but often once he’s up on the lift he goes into a flow state and just allows the process to happen. He also will tie real balloons on for reference and take pictures to see what will render best. Part of how he’s found so much success is how easy it is to recognize his work. No one else has the same interest in light and shadow he does at such a large scale. “The clear balloons where you can see both sides are always 100% mine,” he said.
His mother back in the south of England might not entirely understand what he does, but she’s come to appreciate his success. “My grandma said recently ‘Why didn’t he go to university?’ and my mom said ‘You do realize he’s done a show for Derren Brown on the BBC, right?’” Fanakapan recalled.
Painting murals for the world to see on multiple continents is a thrilling, dynamic lifestyle.
Painting murals for the world to see on multiple continents is a thrilling, dynamic lifestyle. His collaboration with Christina Angelina has been in movies and advertisements, and he’s heard of people proposing to their partners in front of it. But one of the challenges of working publicly is that no matter how much you pour into a mural, it’s always ephemeral. Fanakapan painted a wall depicting rabbits in a hat in Ukraine, and shortly after, the war broke out. He’s not sure if the mural is still around, but it’s a reminder of how fleeting the art form can be and how global the culture is.
“Of everywhere I’ve gone, Japan is my favorite place,” he said. “The people are great, the food are great, it’s just like being on another planet. I love local Japanese kitschy culture—all of the little bits of plastic, the neon colors. I probably shouldn’t love plastic so much,” he said. His murals celebrate the beauty in kitsch, though, and the balloons are something of a representation of transient quality of the street art lifestyle. After all, a balloon can’t be kept down.
When he’s not creating murals, Fanakapan can be found in a much higher-risk activity: cliff-jumping.
When he’s not creating murals, Fanakapan can be found in a much higher-risk activity: cliff-jumping. “It’s a big adrenaline rush. There’s nothing else like it,” he said. He’s twisted his ankle doing it and has taken a break from it for the time being, but it speaks to the adventurous spirit he brings to both his art and his life. Cliff jumping, despite the danger, can be serene and meditative, too.
There’s something about being high up that Fanakapan finds soothing, and he’s found that in his art practice, as well. “It’s my favorite place to be on a lift,” he said. “Everything’s a bit more quiet up there. No matter what part of the world you’re in, it’s the same. Sometimes I look down and ask myself ‘What part of the world am I in?’”
This portion of Fanakapan’s life and career is less about the adrenaline rush of the jump and more about that serenity at the top. “I’ve used most of my anger up at this point. I’ve done enough shouting at it all,” he said. A balloon might be a symbol of how fleeting good times are and how they eventually deflate depending on how you look at it, but the ones in Fanakapan’s murals aren’t tethered to the earth. They’re tethered to the walls of the world, and from there they can float anywhere, never deflating.
Emma Riva is a novelist and art journalist. She is the author of Night Shift in Tamaqua, an illustrated novel that follows a love story between 24-hour-diner waitress and a Postmates driver. As an art writer, she is particularly interested in working with international artists and exploring how visual art can both transcend cultural boundaries and highlight the complexities of individual identity. Emma is a graduate of The New School and a Wilbur and Niso Smith Author of Tomorrow. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Insta: @emmawithglasses
Website: emmawithglasses.com