On Paper No AI

powered by Maria Sârbu & Gabriela Robeci

Started off in 2025 as a writing exercise that meant to produce a creative curatorial text with no interventions or enhancements aided by technology, what was once an idea turned into a project of writing with no borders. Producing text used to be a form of expressing what one thought and could not yet voice out clearly. Scribing on paper used to be therapeutical, poetic, necessary, hard, daunting, an art form, and a lot more, and was thus, precious. It conformed to no trending topics, highly-used words, no statistics to try to reach out to targeted groups through carefully analyzed vocabulary. It used to be quite the contrary.

This series of essays is produced as a ping pong between the two art historians and critics. The texts on art are hand-written whilst visiting exhibitions in person, unmediated by representations. They express what one feels when being present and experiencing art on site, even if those ideas are not fully logical or complete.

In a time when perfected critical texts on art are the standard, and standardisation in criticism seems to deplete us of the spark that attracted us in the first place, the decision has been made to steer clear of all of that, and to go back to the basics of art writing.

As this project carries on, more people will be invited to bring their contribution, and we will see where all of this leads.