OCO Fellowship Programme 2025-26
Curatorial note
The second edition of the OCO Fellowship Programme is conceived as an in-depth research exploration into Chandua, the appliqué craft tradition of Odisha. Building upon the ethos of the inaugural edition, this fellowship continues to cultivate meaningful dialogues that intersect the social, historical, anthropological, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions embedded within Chandua-making practices.
Functioning as an extension of the OCO Residency Programme, the Fellowship seeks to further the documentation-driven research initiated by participating fellows. Through expanded field engagement across various craft clusters in Odisha, the programme aims to map the networks of power, systems of artistic interdependence, patterns of labour distribution, and ongoing negotiations for artistic autonomy that configure traditional modes of making and knowledge transmission.
In doing so, the Fellowship endeavours to foreground how generational and non-generational groups of artisans coexist, collaborate, and occasionally diverge, revealing the subtle dynamics that shape both the preservation and transformation of Chandua in contemporary contexts. This edition aspires to offer a textured understanding of the craft’s living continuum, illuminating the evolving relationships that sustain its relevance within Odisha’s cultural landscape.
Curator of OCO
Fellowship 2025-26
Sibdas Sengupta
Curator
Sibdas works with subjects matters around transformative affectedness in relation to speed and immediacy; ideas around forgetfulness and historical gaps, rejection and space of abstraction. Sibdas has participated in many group exhibition, such as Indian Art Fair(2020); The earth is still going around the sun, curated by Mile Samdab (2019) and Student Biennale, Kochi Muziris Biennale (2016), among others. Sibdas had also various project displays of his installations such as Second Wave Of Amnesia, Final MFA Solo Project Display, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida (2019); response to an absurd land, which doesn't exist, Shiv Nadar University (2018) and The City Under-Wrapped, Shiv Nadar University (2018), among others
Fellows of 2025-26
Raj Maurya
Photographer
Raj Maurya is a multidisciplinary artist, archivist, and researcher working at the intersections of photography, moving image, and community-led archival practices. Trained in photography design, his work spans photography, film, and archival research, exploring how lived experiences, cultural practices, and oral histories shape collective memory and identity.
Raj’s practice is rooted in close collaborations with communities and draws from traditional knowledge systems, material culture, and local histories.He uses visual storytelling not only as a method of documentation but also as a way to reimagine and recontextualize cultural heritage in contemporary forms.
Coming up
OCO Symposium
Panel III: The OCO Fellowship – Behind the Book
The Making of Chandua: Canopies of Labour: Fieldwork, Archives, and Artisanal Biographies
This panel offers a behind-the-scenes look at the research and documentation that shaped OCO’s forthcoming publication on Odisha’s appliqué traditions. It brings together the OCO Fellows and a practitioner from SIDAC to reflect on what it means to study a living craft through fieldwork, archives, oral histories, and the lives of artisans. The conversation explores how encounters across craft clusters informed the making of the book, how artisanal knowledge is recorded and interpreted, and how field-based research can bring individual makers, their skills, histories, and changing practices into the larger narrative of a craft tradition. Moderator: Sibdas Sengupta, Curator & Editor, OCO Panelists: Raj Maurya, Archivist Fellow · Madhulika S. Naidu, Research Fellow · Babita Mohanty, Deputy Director, SIDAC
