I saw Ohida Khandakar’s exhibit titled “Dream your Museum”, at Serendipity Arts Festival 2023. The exhibit, comprising a film and a display of various objects– empty bottles of perfume, old letters, cigarette boxes, and bus tickets– centres around the artist’s uncle, Khandakar Selim, and his almost compulsive passion for collecting and caring for objects. I was very moved by the exhibit and Selim’s deep tenderness towards this world of non-living things, and his distant dream to build something like a museum with it. I wanted to interview Ohida about what drew her to this topic, and about her uncle’s passion for collecting– something he calls an “addiction”.
Purvi: Tell me about your project ‘Dream your Museum’, and how you started working on it.
Ohida: It started during COVID, when I went back home to Kelepara– a village in West Bengal– where I grew up, and where my family still lives. I had just bought a new camera, and was taking an online film course in my free time, with the documentary filmmaker RV Ramani. I was really enjoying the story telling part of it.
At the same time, I remember, there was a huge argument going on in my family about objects. There were these objects that they wanted to throw away in the pond. This was interesting to me– I was wondering, what has happened? Why does my family want to throw these objects into the pond?
Purvi: And these objects belonged to your uncle? Khandakar Selim?
Ohida: Yes, these were items he had collected over decades. During the Covid lockdown, with nothing else to do, I started having long conversations with chacha (Khandakar Selim). One day, I suggested, "Why don’t I try to digitally archive your collection?" Most of the family wanted to throw the objects away, but as an artist I felt deeply uncomfortable seeing these pieces being discarded.
I realized that even if I couldn’t preserve the objects physically, I could document and archive them with my camera. When I brought this idea to chacha, he became very enthusiastic about it. I had my camera and was already surrounded by my family, so everyday I would shoot footage, copy it to my laptop, and then shoot some more. It all started very organically, with the sole intention of archiving these objects.
