'Inscriptions' is Soma Bhowmik's contribution to the Group Visual Arts Project 'RACONTEURS', currently taking place at the A.M. Studio in Kolkata, India. As an art critic and art historian, she compares here the production of texts to the production of visual works, and in a very interesting reversal of roles, instead of using written texts in order to explain visual works, she uses images in support of the written texts.

The main idea of this show is to attempt at showcasing various categories of texts that emerged in the course of my practice as a curator, art-critic and art-historian. And through these texts I wish to convey the process and the procedure followed to reach an understanding of the projects which are entirely visual as its main content.

Visual artists play with multiple layers of explorations and experiments before reaching the final execution. Theoretical process too follows exactly a similar path before arriving at a convincing stage. That is one of the reasons why we tried to share the process of curating any show by displaying the layout or plan directly.

In this show display of supporting images related to particular articles tries to explain the various texts; it may be a research-thesis or a review or article. By creating variations in the display of the text-image materials we have tried to create an ambience with a visual approach. Simply speaking, we wanted to make the textual matter a part of the visual ambience.

I believe an art historian should always practice some practical works to understand the visual language very intensely. It is true that visual communication has directness; but when one writes a text other visuals and references also get evoked, thus enriching our experience of formulating a text. Communication is vital to any material always.