Murata has consistently produced works that reflect on the very condition of artworks being exhibited. Bang (2025) can be understood as part of this ongoing line of thought.

"Bang" consists of a shooting-game target that the artist herself has shot through using a toy gun with BB pellets, subsequently presented as an artwork. The piece is fixed in place by magnetic spheres: the installer randomly drives nails or pins into the wall, places the work on top, and secures it with the magnets. As a result, the holes already made by the artist and those newly made by the installer in the act of installation appear simultaneously, producing a doubled image.

Through the overlap of these two kinds of identical actions, lines or planes begin to emerge on the surface of the work. Here, the collaboration between the artist and the person installing the work—whether curator, gallerist, or technician—can itself become a form of aesthetic. Some may choose to control this process, while others may leave it to chance.

For Murata, who works with photography and is not a native English speaker, the word “shoot” has always felt somewhat peculiar—encountered through academic study of photographic theory and practice. At the same time, she feels a certain fatigue toward the saturated condition in which such linguistic dissonances are readily appropriated as artistic meaning within the context of art.

Still, this kind of discomfort persists: it resembles the kind of unnecessary yet unavoidable questions that arise in everyday life—such as why people occasionally become violent. These are not questions that demand answers, yet they return unbidden, lingering as trivial thoughts that one need not think about, and yet cannot entirely dismiss.