Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers in their apartment, 1834; Houria Niati, No to torture, 1982.
“Niati is an Algerian artist who grew up in French occupied Algeria and resisted colonialism through street art and graffiti in her adolescence. […] In No to Torture, Niati disfigures the characters of Delacroix to show the suffering of the women under colonialism and the violence and social inequality, which ensued. She rejects the sensuous secluded veiled women of Delacroix and Renoir. Niati’s women are silhouettes, empty and inhuman. Her women are digitized and her colour palette unnaturally cool. She purposefully X-s out their faces and even removes the face of the blue figure to highlight the dehumanization of these women.”
—Barâa Arar, “Escaping the harem: postcolonial explorations of Algerian women in art” [x]
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