Untitled 1995

Houria Niati made this untitled piece with ink and watercolor, and you can feel the artist feeling her way through the process. She's laying down marks, some delicate and translucent, others, like that big black figure on the left, really assertive and opaque. The piece has got this tension between the planned and the accidental, like the way the watercolor bleeds into the paper, creating these soft, hazy areas that contrast with the more defined shapes. I love how the Arabic script dances around the composition, both as text and texture, and how that big black slash almost obliterates it. It makes you wonder, what's being covered up, what's being revealed? Niati's work is all about exploring identity, culture, and memory, and you can see those themes swirling around in this piece too. It reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly, in the way he used writing as a kind of visual poetry. It's art that embraces ambiguity, that invites us to bring our own interpretations to the table.