OCO Residency Programme 2026
Curatorial note
Following the successful completion of two editions of the Odisha Craft Odyssey Residency, which focused on Bell Metal and Appliqué work, we are proud to announce our third edition, dedicated to the Dokra Craft of Odisha. OCO is a multi-year documentation and survey project investigating diverse craft practices across the state. This year’s intervention focuses on documenting Dokra through interdisciplinary approaches. We invite researchers from academic backgrounds, visual artists, designers, and lens-based practitioners interested in merging ethnographic research with creative practice.
This edition is unique as we are expanding our application process to include international participants alongside Indian citizens. During the residency, participants are encouraged to understand Dokra through its making processes, material properties, and socio-historical, cultural, and aesthetic orientations. Furthermore, residents are pushed to explore the role of the community and artisanal identity, addressing questions of authorship, autonomy, appropriation, power relations, and the ‘opacities of knowledge’ within contemporary making processes. While the residency is research-centered, we aim to move beyond academic limitations, utilizing interdisciplinary methods to amplify the possibilities of research across various domains.
Jury of OCO Residency 2026
Richa Agarwal
Jury
Richa Agarwal is Chairperson of the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, where she focuses on preserving the artistic heritage of Bengal through initiatives that include heritage restoration projects aimed at safeguarding the region's cultural legacy for future generations. She also serves as CEO of Emami Art, where she combines a forward-thinking approach with a commitment to cultural heritage through exhibitions, commissions, and cultural events that foster relationships within the arts community in Kolkata and beyond. A successful entrepreneur chairing several companies, Richa Agarwal has been recognised for her contributions to art and culture with prestigious honours, including The New Indian Express Group DEVI Award (2022) and The Times Power Women Award (2018)
Sibdas Sengupta
Jury
Sibdas Sengupta is a conceptual artist and curator from Odisha, currently based in Gurugram, Haryana. Through collaborative, critical, and process-oriented frameworks, Sibdas explores the evolving landscape of curatorial engagement through different forms of exhibition-making practices. As the curator, currently, he leads the programming for Dotwalk Ajitara Art Residency in New Delhi and Odisha Craft Odyssey in Bhubaneswar.
Premjish Achari
Jury
Premjish Achari is a curator and writer, currently serving as Curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi. He was Editorial Supervisor for Lokame Tharavadu (2021), a landmark exhibition organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation. His writings have been published in Take on Art, Portrait of an Artist as an Individual, Altaf: Early Drawings, Iconic: Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, and Unframed (Harper Design, 2023), among others.
Jagannath Panda
Jury
Jagannath Panda is a leading contemporary artist known for his synthesis of urban realism, mythology, and traditional craft. He has exhibited internationally, including at the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Pizzuti Collection (Ohio), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), and Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi). In 2011, he founded the Utsha Foundation for Contemporary Art in Bhubaneswar to foster cultural dialogue and artistic experimentation. He currently lives and works in New Delhi, actively contributing to both Indian and global contemporary art discourses.
Residents of 2026
Tejal Kawachi
Photographer
Tejal Kawachi is a visual artist and photographer whose practice moves between documentary and personal narrative, using photography, installation, and print to explore identity, belonging, and memory. She approaches photography as a method of inquiry rather than simple representation, examining how individual and collective identities are constructed through place, labor, tradition, and relationships over time.
Rooted in fieldwork and lived experience, her projects ask how identity is built, inherited, and renegotiated across shifting homes, cities, and states of dependence, reflecting a broader concern with urban transformation, migration, and everyday life. Across her practice, she is concerned with documentation as a form of critical engagement; one that challenges assumptions about who and what is deemed worthy of attention, situating individual narratives within larger historical and social contexts.
An Overview: Dhokra Craft
Dhokra, also known as Dokra, is a traditional non-ferrous metal casting craft practiced using the ancient lost-wax casting technique. The craft is widely recognized for its rustic visual quality, intricate linear detailing, and handcrafted individuality. Since the mold is broken after every casting, each object produced remains completely unique.
In Odisha, Dhokra is primarily associated with the Dhenkanal region and artisan communities residing in clusters such as Nuagaon, Nabajeevanpur, and historically Sadeibereni. The craft is practiced within household-based workshop systems where the entire family contributes to different stages of production.
Traditional Dhokra objects include tribal figurines, ritual lamps, musicians, animals, jewelry, utensils, bells, wall décor, and mother-and-child forms. Tribal life, forests, folk rituals, village activities, agrarian culture, and indigenous belief systems largely inspire the motifs.
The craft relies heavily on manual labour and locally adapted techniques. Materials such as clay, beeswax, resin, brass scrap, rice husk, and natural fuel sources remain central to the process. Despite increasing contemporary adaptation into lifestyle and decorative products, the making process itself has remained largely unchanged for generations.
About Sadeibereni and its Geographical Significance to Dhokra
Sadeibereni, located in Dhenkanal district under the Saptasajya Panchayat region, has historically been identified as one of the most important Dhokra craft settlements in Odisha. The village is situated around 10 km from Dhenkanal town and remains connected to Bhubaneswar and nearby urban centers through road networks.
The surrounding semi-rural and forest-influenced landscape historically supported the craft through access to materials such as river clay, beeswax, forest resin, firewood, and organic binding agents used in mold preparation.
The region’s environment also shaped the visual language of the craft. Motifs such as elephants, horses, tribal musicians, village women, ritual lamps, and mother-and-child forms are closely linked to the indigenous and agrarian culture of the area.
The close proximity between Sadeibereni, Nuagaon, and Nabajeevanpur helped sustain intergenerational knowledge transfer and collective production systems. Even though active production has shifted over time, Sadeibereni continues to remain geographically and culturally important as the historical identity of Odisha’s Dhokra tradition.
