The Indian artist Khandakar Ohida has been named the winner of the seventh version of the Jameel Prize. Ohida obtained the award for the movie Dream Your Museum, a young portrait of her uncle, Khandakar Selim, whose story is advised by way of his seemingly mundane however collectively extraordinary assortment of objects and memorabilia.
Awarded by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London and the Saudi Arabia-based cultural organisation Artwork Jameel, the £25,000 Jameel Prize is offered each three years to an artist impressed by Islamic traditions. Based in 2009, it goals to spotlight the methods through which the Islamic world’s previous achievements in artwork are mirrored within the work of up to date practitioners. This yr’s version focuses on artists working with transferring picture and digital media—it obtained over 300 entries from world wide.
Dream Your Museum will go on show on the V&A, alongside works by the awards’ six different finalists, from 30 November. Talking forward of the opening, the museum’s curator of up to date artwork from the Center East, Rachel Dedman, stated: “For all these artists, an indicator of their work is this mix of the non-public and the political. Their initiatives emerge from their very own heritage and expertise, however communicate to one thing common.
“As we witness horrible conflicts throughout the Center East and the disproportionate results of local weather change throughout the World South, it feels ever extra pressing that we convey the voices of artists who’re working and telling tales from these areas into the V&A, to champion the intimate, private, nuanced, complicated storytelling they’re doing on this area.”
Ohida, who works between Kolkata and New Delhi, created Dream Your Museum at her household’s conventional mud home in West Bengal. Although the home has since been torn down, her movie offers an necessary report of her uncle’s assortment of greater than 12,000 objects, amassed lovingly over the previous 50 years. Lots of the items got to him folks he helped as a physician’s assistant.
Khandakar Ohida, Dream Your Museum (2022)
Courtesy Khandakar Ohida
A collection of Selim’s objects—together with a hand mirror, binoculars, images, ceramics and fragrance bottles—are displayed alongside the movie. Although lots of the objects have been beforehand discarded, all have been given which means by his conservation and care. When seen by way of Ohida’s lens, in addition they replicate the artist and topic’s joint want for a museum which displays numerous social and cultural identities, and the experiences of minorities in India.
“The jury praised the quiet energy of Khandakar’s stunning cinematic work, Dream Your Museum,” stated V&A director and chair of the Jameel Prize judging panel, Tristram Hunt, in an announcement. “The movie and set up of objects from her uncle’s huge esoteric assortment communicate to an expertise of Muslim communities in India, and problem the standard authority of typical museums.”
Ohida’s movie is displayed alongside shortlisted works by Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, Jawa El Khash, Alia Farid, Zahra Malkani, Khandakar Ohida, Marrim Akashi Sani, and Rami Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. These artists have interaction with points referring to water, ecology, panorama, spirituality, and the methods through which extractive industries and political dynamics form the environmental and social material of the Center East and South Asia. They obtain this by way of practices spanning sculpture, pictures, set up, sound, efficiency and VR.
Discussing the selection to focus this yr’s prize on transferring picture and digital media, Dedman stated: “I proposed this as our theme as a result of I observed that in earlier years, when this sort of work was submitted alongside artists working in additional tangible media—ceramics, textiles, style—it did not all the time resonate with a jury in fairly the identical means. This felt like a chance misplaced.
She continues: “Movie and animation, set up, all time primarily based media and digital applied sciences provide the potential of immersive and emotional encounters for a customer, for storytelling within the strongest sense.”
Jameel Prize: Transferring Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, till 16 March 2025
