Piggyback

Piggyback is a 2017 etching with aquatint that fits squarely within Takeda's sustained interest in the small comedies of contemporary domestic life. The title indicates a figure carried on another's back — most likely a woman bearing a child, partner, or oversized household object across a cramped interior, a motif consistent with her recurring imagery of figures awkwardly negotiating apartment-scale rooms. The intaglio technique allows her to model the weighted, slightly off-balance posture through tonal aquatint, while the etched line describes the specific furniture and clothing of a modern Japanese home. Her aquatint resists are typically laid in two or three bites to produce the soft grey gradients she favors over high-contrast black, lending the scene a deadpan, slightly tired atmosphere appropriate to the subject. The print continues her project of treating quotidian acts of mutual support — carrying, holding, accommodating — as the substantive material of contemporary printmaking, in deliberate contrast to the heroic figuration of the older Japanese print tradition.