India, Nov. 6 -- The capital cities of most Indian states are concrete jungles with an ever-shrinking green cover. That's thankfully not the case with Bhubaneshwar where the Odisha Craft Odyssey held the OCO Symposium 2026 on September 20. The theme this year was Mapping Transitions: Art, Craft and the Ethnographic Turn with the focus on Chandua, an applique tradition from the state.

The event began with filmmaker and art curator Premjish Achari detailing the inspiration behind Odisha Craft Odyssey's Chandua: Canopies of Labour, a bilingual book that he edited with Sibdas Sengupta. "Unfair binaries between art and craft need to be challenged. Everything now is artisanal, but the social background is often ignored," he said adding that fa...