Jameel Prize goes to Khandakar Ohida

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has announced Khandakar Ohida as the recipient of the 7th Jameel Prize for her film installation Dream Your Museum. The Jameel Prize, which carries a £25,000 monetary award, is co-organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum together with Art Jameel, a cultural organization based in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The Prize is given on a triennial basis for achievements in contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic culture, society, history and ideas. The focus of this year's edition of the Jameel Prize is the moving image and digital media.

Ohida's Dream Your Museum is a cinematic testament to Khandakar Selim, her uncle, and the collection of more than 12,000 items which he had amassed over the past five decades in his traditional mud house in West Bengal, India. Having collected a wide range of objects that others discarded, from train tickets, perfume bottles and cameras to ceramics, postcards and photographs, Selim's eclectic selection of knick-knacks confirms the age-old adage of other people's unwanted objects becoming treasured artifacts.

Apart from delving into Selim's motivations for the acquisition of these items, Ohida's film takes a critical approach to the issue of the curatorial policy of Indian museums, challenging their formal nature and rigid conception as proponents of state-promoted nationalism which provides little room for alternative narratives. In Dream Your Museum, Ohida provides a counterbalance to this colonial model, encouraging people to uncover the value of the seemingly trite objects that lurk in the background of their everyday lives. While expressing a critical stance to the current state of affairs, the film also reflects the yearning of the director and her protagonist uncle for a more open, community-based format of museum work, reflective of the diverse social and cultural identities and the experiences of minorities in India.

Dream Your Museum is being presented with six other works that were shortlisted for the Jameel Prize, by the artists: Jawa El Khash; Alia Farid; Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian; Sadik Kwaish Alfraji; Marrim Akashi Sani; and Zahra Malkani. All of these works will be on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum until March 16, 2025.

Ohida maintains an active presence on Instagram. More information about other events at the Victoria & Albert Museum can be found on their site.