Ohida Khandakar

Where Dust Remembers

Exhibition view — a wall-mounted monitor showing a film still of hands carefully holding a small worn notebook, with headphones on either side for intimate viewing at Jan Van Eyck Academie.

Video installation, 2025. A short film (10 min) about Khandakar Selim’s collection and the demolition of his mud house. Shown at Jan Van Eyck Academie Open Studio, Maastricht, with an interactive station inviting visitors to write letters to the future community museum in Kelepara village, India.

Written by

Khandakar Ohida

in

,

Video installation, 2025
Jan Van Eyck Academie Open Studio, Maastricht

Short video (10 min), colour, sound, objects, interactive station.

Where Dust Remembers is a short film developed specially for the Jan Van Eyck Academie open studio from Ohida’s feature-length documentary project Museum on the Moon. It centres on her uncle Khandakar Selim’s lifelong collecting practice and the demolition of his mud house in Kelepara village, West Bengal — originating from an observation of the everyday decay of objects within spaces where imagination and aspiration are tightly regulated.

The work poses a central question: how much are we permitted to dream? It functions as a metaphorical site — one imagined as existing beyond conflict, social exclusion, and natural calamity. Over six years, Ohida documented and cared for nearly 12,000 unclassified objects collected by Selim, a lower-middle-class rural Muslim man, developing an urgency to interrogate the foundational expectations of the museum — and to question who is granted the legitimacy to create one.

Exhibition view — a wall-mounted monitor showing a film still of hands carefully holding a small worn notebook, with headphones on either side for intimate viewing at Jan Van Eyck Academie.
Display view, Jan Van Eyck Academie Open Studio, 2025

Film Stills

Film still — a cluster of old coins arranged on a colorfully painted decorative surface. Subtitle reads: 'Getting coins — I have even dreamt about it so many times — or buying books.'
Film still — Khandakar Selim seated cross-legged, browsing a stamp album. Subtitle reads: 'I started collecting stamps from everywhere.'
Film still — Khandakar Selim stands in a lush green forest, holding a dark object, reflecting on how trees are being cut down and on a future where forests may only be seen in museums.
Film still — the demolition of a mud structure, dust billowing and rubble filling the frame, documenting the destruction of Selim's mud house.
The demolition of the Kelepara mud house

Interactive Station

Visitors were invited to write letters to Museum on the Moon. The letters will be displayed in a future community museum in Kelepara village, India.

Interactive station — a desk with letter-writing materials: handwritten notes, postcards, a rubber stamp, and a printed invitation asking visitors to send a letter to 'Museum on the Moon / Dream Your Museum.'
Interactive station — letters and postcards written by visitors, pinned to the wall under a single spotlight, alongside a small toy figure. These letters will travel to Kelepara village, India, to be held in the future community museum.

More posts