OCO Symposium 2026

OCO Symposium 2026

OCO’s first symposium brings together artists, curators, researchers, cultural practitioners, and institutional voices to examine how craft, art, knowledge, and communities intersect. The symposium features three panel discussions across the day, each approaching Odisha’s living craft traditions from a different perspective.

Panel I — Art as Social Practice Artists as Ethnographers: Reimagining Local Knowledge Systems

10:45 AM – 12:00 PM

The opening panel explores how artists can engage with communities as participants in understanding, documenting, and interpreting local knowledge. The discussion considers the relationship between artistic practice, ethnography, lived experience, and knowledge systems.

Moderator: Premjish Achari (Curator & Editor, OCO)

Panelists: Jeebesh Bagchi(Artist & Curator), Anupam Roy (Panjeri Artists’ Union), Bishnu Mohapatra (Poet, Social Theorist & Educator)

Panel II — The Institutional Bridge Institution Building between Art, Craft, and Anthropology

12:15 PM – 1:30 PM

This panel examines the role of institutions in creating meaningful connections between art, craft, anthropology, research, and community knowledge. The conversation considers how new institutional models can support documentation, artistic practice, cultural research, and the representation of craft within contemporary cultural spaces.

Moderator: Charudatta Panigrahi, Cultural Policy Expert

Panelists: Roobina Karode, Firoz Gujaral, Siddartha Mohanty

1:30 – 2:30 PM | Networking Lunch

A hosted lunch for symposium guests, offering an opportunity to connect and continue conversations from the morning sessions.

Panel III — The OCO Fellowship: Behind the Book The Making of Chandua: Canopies of Labour: Fieldwork, Archives, and Artisanal Biographies

2:30 PM – 3:45 PM

The final panel goes behind the making of OCO’s forthcoming publication on Odisha’s appliqué traditions. The discussion reflects on the fieldwork, archival research, oral histories, and encounters with artisans that shaped the book, while exploring how individual makers and their knowledge can be documented within the larger history of a living craft tradition. 

Moderator: Sibdas Sengupta, Curator & Editor, OCO

Panelists: Raj Maurya, Archivist Fellow · Madhulika S. Naidu, Research Fellow · Babita Mohanty, Deputy Director, SIDAC