Le rideau

Le rideau (The Curtain) is a 50 × 40 cm etching from 2024, the work with which Baba was selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025. The French title and still-life classification suggest a composition centred on drapery — either a hanging curtain treated as the principal motif or fabric functioning as a framing element for objects arranged before it. Etching is well suited to this subject: hard-ground line work renders the directional weave and folded edges of cloth, while aquatint or controlled cross-hatching builds the graduated tonal passages that describe shadow falling into the depths of a fold. The vertical-leaning 5:4 plate format is typical of intaglio still-life practice, giving room for the curtain to descend through the picture plane. Within Baba's wider practice — sustained from her training at Joshibi University of Art and Design and developed through the Tokyo-area juried exhibition circuit — Le rideau sits with the cohort of mid-career Japanese intaglio printmakers who treat domestic and observed subjects through the disciplined tonal vocabulary of etching rather than the colour-block idiom of contemporary mokuhanga.