Artist and filmmaker Khandakar Ohida is the winner of the 2024 Jameel Prize, a triennial competition for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. At a special ceremony on November 27, 2024 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Ohida was announced as the recipient of the £25,000 award. The Jameel Prize, founded in 2009 in partnership with the V&A, is one of the philanthropic endeavours of Art Jameel, the Jameel family’s cultural initiative, headquartered in Saudi and the UAE.

The theme for this year’s prize was moving image and digital media work, selected via an open call. An exhibition of works by the winner and seven shortlisted artists – chosen from more than 300 submissions –  is on display at the V&A South Kensington until March 16, 2025. “Getting shortlisted for the Jameel Prize was already a big achievement and winning was a bit of a shock,” Ohida reflects, a little more than a week after the show was unveiled to the public.

Yet at the Jameel Prize exhibition curated by the V&A’s Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Rachel Dedman (it will later tour to Cartwright Hall, Bradford, UK and Hayy Jameel, Jeddah), it is easy to see why the jury selected Ohida’s work Dream Your Museum (2022) for the prestigious prize; it is a multilayered work, inscribed with personal and collective memory, a contestation of the conventional museum model and celebration of the power of objects at once.

These paintings often show multiple stories within a single image, without the use of perspective, which taught me to see a story as a moving image. – Khandakar Ohida

The focus of Ohida’s installation is a film about her uncle Selim and the vast collection of more than 12,000 objects he amassed over 50 years, cared for and displayed in his traditional mud home in Kelepara, a rural village in Hooghly, West Bengal. The contemplative film is part documentary, part magical realism – moving from beautiful, slow panning frames of the countryside and Selim at home, carefully tending to his collection and whimsical conversations between Selim and Maria – Ohida’s young niece, who offers interpretations and ideas about the objects Selim shows her, unpacking them from metal trunks that serve as storage for most of his collection.

For the installation at the V&A, the walls are painted a rich, earthy taupe-hue, evoking the mud home they were once displayed in (which has since been destroyed by a cyclone) – with some of the objects from Selim’s ‘museum’ – personal papers, pages from books, clocks, telephones, stamps, perfume bottles, pens and other desultory household items rescued from the rubbish and now imbued with new meanings. Selim began collecting in 1973 and many of the objects were found when he worked as an assistant to a doctor, travelling to patient’s homes and picking up unwanted things. Other objects were discovered at flea markets.

Gradually these personal items also become symbolic; gathered through times of upheaval and in the aftermath of Partition, the objects also represent the stories and lives of their Muslim community in Bengal. Selim’s museum is a challenge to the conventional institutional and colonial models of display, preservation and storytelling – an open invitation to engage differently with objects and their value. Instead of being enshrined in fusty, distant metropolitan buildings, Selim’s portable collection is shown and stowed in his small, domestic environment. The items he attributes as valuable – dusting them and organising them as one might treat a Ming vase or a Benin Bronze – are accessible, ubiquitous and ordinary. His museum – an invitation to dream around, or with these objects – could be viewed as an act of defiance, even of resistance – an antidote to the singular hierarchical and chronological narratives organised by official bastions of culture.

Ohida had always wanted to pursue a career in art, but “it was really difficult to even imagine studying in an art college because there wasn’t one or any art spaces near my village. This was back in 2011, when I first dreamed of going to an art college. Finally, after a lot of arguments with my family, I took the admission test for the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta.”

She had heard about her uncle Selim’s collection from the family. “I remember people saying he collected scrap and advising us not to go see his objects because they filled the entire house. But after I entered art college, my perception of those objects completely changed.”

Ohida made the work in her village during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Almost every day, there was conflict in our house because some of my family members wanted to throw objects into the pond. As an artist, it was difficult for me to watch this happen”, she recalls. “Initially, I just wanted to document those objects with my camera. Gradually, my uncle Khandakar Selim and I became friends, and he began sharing stories about how he had always dreamed of creating something 'like a museum' or 'like an exhibition'. I started documenting the objects almost every day. For my uncle, every object is like a child to him, the way he talks about them.”

Ohida draws on various influences to inform her majestic and magical realist inflected filmmaking practice and take this idea of the objects as living entities even further. In art college, she studied in the Indian painting department, where she learned miniature painting, including Mughal, Rajput and Kangra styles. “These paintings often show multiple stories within a single image, without the use of perspective, which taught me to see a story as a moving image. In Bengal, especially in rural areas, we refer to museums as Jadughar / যাদুঘর (Magic House). In my approach to filmmaking, I wanted to capture that element of magical realism, where the objects themselves act as magical tools within the film. It's as if these non-living objects want to tell their own stories about the world.”

Winning the prize will have an important effect on Selim and his collection. Ohida explains that the money will firstly go towards creating “a small room for the museum, as we didn't have any space to properly preserve the objects. We are also working on a 3D museum film, something like a magic house (a 360-degree film) since the original house was demolished. Additionally, we are developing our long-term feature documentary, Museum on The Moon.”

In addition, Ohida mentions that she is focusing on creating “a rural museum that could help spark cultural conversations in the village”. She says, “Growing up in a rural area, I faced a lot of challenges when I decided to pursue art as a career. I want to help change that for others so that more rural talent can shine and have opportunities on a bigger stage. I also hope to build small community museums in other towns and villages to promote art and uplift local communities, giving them a space to share their stories and creativity.”

At the V&A, visitors can experience just a small part of Selim’s array of otherworldly curiosities. But the real hope, as Ohida emphasises, is that “one day people will come to see our actual small community museum in our village”.