Dream Your Museum

Khandakar Ohida's Dream Your Museum (2022) is a film about the artist's uncle, Khandakar Selim, and his collection of more than 12,000 objects amassed over the past 50 years. From train tickets, perfume bottles and cameras, to ceramics, postcards and photographs, Selim sees value in things others discard. Khandakar's film documents her uncle's collection as it was displayed in their traditional mud house in West Bengal, India, 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. The film reflects Ohida and Selim's yearning for an open, community museum which reflects diverse social and cultural identities and the experiences of minorities in India.