The Textile Art residency program, titled ‘LINK -The Never-Ending Thread' organized by D.I.S.C The Art from 1st October to 29th November. Ten overseas visual artists, designers, and fiber artists joined the textile residency program to explore the Odishan textile art practices and experience the social life of weavers. The Participated artists lived in Fakirpur village, which is famous for its wild tussar silk and weavings. Whole program was conceptualised with two parts. First phase was the journey to the textile villages and the second phase was to implement the travel experiences to create arts and exhibit their art works at Bhubaneswar.

The D.I.S.C the art team was travelled with the international artist to the popular textile villages of Odisha to explore the indigenous weaving and sacredness of the Khadi, and ikkat weaving to experience the ancient and indigenous weaving skills, natural color, tie and dye, culture, and rituals within their community. They have visited Maniabandha, Nuapatna, Boudh ,Sonpur, Barpally, Bhabanipatna, Kottpad, Gopalpur, Mareigaon and Fakirpur. Each village is unique for their weaving and technique. Maniabandha and Nuapatna are popular for silk and ikat weaving. Sonepur and Boudh are popular for their Pato. Bargarh and Barpali for their tie and dye on cotton. The Kotpad weavings are unique in their own way and practiced by indigenous people, for this they are known as Kabir weavers. These weavers use Natural color collected from forests.

The participant artists travelled the textile villages to observe techniques, experience the different kinds of weaving , looms, natural color from weavers and applied those techniques with their art practice to create a work of art. The journey part of the residency was very unique and connected with the nature, culture, tradition and social life of weavers. The textile program is one of the unique programs where artists will get connected with the social life of the weavers and the exchange between both national and International collaboration. This is a strong visual dialogue to connect the deeper experience of local weaving. The program gave a glimpse of the Odishan textile practices and various material, yarns and natural colors are practiced in weaving. Artists have experienced the textiles resources, methods, and collected ideas that were implemented in their art practices. The participant artists worked at base camp to express their ideas and experiments with the fabric, yarns, colors and weavings to create a new form of art.

The concepts of exchanging skills and perceiving knowledge from local textile art practice implemented in their art practices. It was an artistic journey to explore and the making process of the artist’s works were documented by photographer Biswajit Sahani. He is one of the talented photographers as well as an artist.

The cultural exchange and collaboration with the National and International artists, art lovers, and cultural professionals. This residency was focused on textile practices of Odisha. We focused on popular weavers’ villages where all participant artists are experiencing the local weaving technique, materials, natural colors, and ikkat process. All visiting artists visited the master weavers , Sarat Patra from Nuapatna, Chaturbhuj Meher from Sonpur, Sukanti Meher, Surendra Meher, Khetra Mohan Meher from Barpali and Jalpali villages at Bargarh district, Kapileswaro Mohonto from Kotpad village in Koraput. All master weavers shared their experiences and masterpieces to the artist which shows the hard work of the weaving process of masterpieces.