“In 'Bringing Water From the Fountain Has Nothing Romantic About It' , Algerian-born Houria Niati, Now living in London, dispels the 19th-century concept of the exotic nature of then French Algeria as depicted by white male artists.
Through painting, photography, poetry and installations, she presents the attitude of women trapped in a demeaning lifestyle. 'No To torture' - a takeoff on a 19th-century painting by Eugene Delacroix, further continues her theme. Her concept is similar to USF’s own faculty artist Thom McLaughlin’s reduction of Hudson River school landscape artists to the mundane, though Niati’s inspiration springs from a more emotional source.