Some museums you visit. Others, you dream.
In this episode of This Being Human, host Mai Habib sits down with artist and filmmaker Ohida Khandakar to discuss her award-winning film Dream Your Museum. Ohida reflects on how her Uncle Selim Khandakar’s collection of over 12,000 ordinary—yet utterly extraordinary—objects, acquired over 50 years, became a living museum through imagination and storytelling.
From a mud house to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dream Your Museum rethinks exhibition spaces, emphasizing dynamic engagement with culture and everyday life as their defining attributes.
Follow along as Ohida shares her experience navigating the arts as a Muslim Indian woman, the process of curating and documenting a museum that comes to life, and why you should dream about the impossible. She also offers up the essentials to dream your own museum: inspiration, creation, and human connection.
The Museum wishes to thank Nadir and Shabin Mohamed for their founding support of This Being Human.
Key Moments
[0:10] Introduction to This Being Human and Ohida Khandakar’s short film Dream Your Museum
[1:18] Ohida Khandakar’s background in the arts and artistic interests
[1:54] Pursuing a career in visual art as a Muslim Indian woman
[5:59] From mud house to the moon: Dream Your Museum’s inspiration and creation
[13:00] Curating and caring for the traveling museum
[15:46] Collecting curiosities: how decades of artistic ritual became a museum
[19:59] Sharing the subtle joys of simple objects
[22:08] Living objects: the restorative power of imagination
[23:40] Redefining museum spaces: dreaming, creating, and transforming our surroundings
[26:40] Closing remarks on Dream Your Museum