The V&A and Art Jameel have announced Khandakar Ohida (b. 1993, India) as the winner of the 7th edition of the Jameel Prize, an international award worth £25,000 for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. The triennial competition, founded in 2009 in collaboration with Art Jameel, focusses this year on artists working with moving image and digital media. An exhibition of works by the winner and shortlisted artists opens at the V&A South Kensington on November 30, 2024 through to March 16, 2025.
Khandakar Ohida received the award for the film ‘Dream Your Museum’ (2022) a portrait of her uncle, Khandakar Selim, who has built an extraordinary collection of objects and memorabilia over the last 50 years. Ohida documented the collection as it was displayed in her uncle’s traditional mud home, which has since been torn down. The work challenges the formal nature of museums in India, particularly as bastions of nationalism that offer little room for alternative narratives. ‘Dream Your Museum’ counters the colonial museum model, instead inviting people to find value in the seemingly banal objects that are an intrinsic part of their lives. As members of India’s Muslim community, both Selim and the artist confront the socio-political hierarchies that shape identity, offering a nuanced exploration of cultural representation and belonging.
For ‘Jameel Prize: Moving Images’ the film is accompanied by an installation of objects from Selim’s collection, which he transports in simple metal trunks. This portable museum is displayed informally as a jumble of curious items, an installation choice intended to defy the authority and neatness typically found in conventional museums. In this work the artist invites us to envision a future where cultural heritage is liberated from the constraints of convention and exclusivity.
Tristram Hunt, V&A Director and chair of the Jameel Prize judging panel, said, “The jury praised the quiet power of Khandakar’s beautiful cinematic work, Dream Your Museum. The film and installation of objects from her uncle’s vast esoteric collection speak to an experience of Muslim communities in India, and challenge the traditional authority of conventional museums.”
Antonia Carver, Art Jameel Director, said: “We are so thrilled to celebrate the seventh edition of the Jameel Prize, awarded to Khandakar Ohida based on a rigorous selection process. The significance of this prize lies in its ability to highlight the innovative spirit at the heart of practices that draw on the legacy of Islamic art and design. This year, by focussing on moving image and digital media, the prize sheds light on artists who are redefining visual storytelling in form and content, and are engaging with urgent issues – from ecology and spirituality to the resilience of community histories”
Curated by the V&A’s Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Rachel Dedman, ‘Jameel Prize: Moving Images’will go on tour to Cartwright Hall, Bradford, as part of their year as the UK’s City of Culture in 2025, and to Hayy Jameel, Jeddah.
The shortlisted artists for ‘Jameel Prize: Moving Images’ are Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, Jawa El Khash, Alia Farid, Zahra Malkani, Khandakar Ohida, Marrim Akashi Sani, and Rami Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian (as a collective). Spanning film, sculpture, photography, installation, sound, performance, and VR, the finalists’ works engage with issues relating to water, ecology, landscape, and spirituality, and the ways in which extractive industries and political dynamics shape the environmental and social fabric of the Middle East and South Asia. The artists address how history is written – examining the making of monuments and their deconstruction through acts of iconoclasm, and the forging of alternative approaches to museums and collections. Many works offer personal testaments to community, resilience, and connection, with hand-drawn animation and photography used for powerful storytelling.
Applicants were sought through an open call in 2023, which considered artists working with film, video and time-based media, alongside those engaging with established and emerging digital technologies. From over 300 submissions, seven finalists were selected by an international jury composed of artists Morehshin Allahyari and Ajlan Gharem (winner of the previous Prize, Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics), curator Sadia Shirazi, and academic Laura U. Marks, and chaired by V&A Director Tristram Hunt.
Over the past six editions, the Jameel Prize has received applications from more than 1,700 artists from over 40 countries, exhibited the work of 56 artists and designers, and toured to 18 venues globally.
