BRADFORD.- Seven artists. One powerful exhibition. Jameel Prize: Moving Images, the latest edition of the V&A’s award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic culture, is in its final weeks at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, the only place outside London to experience it before it begins its international tour.
Jameel Prize: Moving Images is the seventh edition of the V&A’s triennial award, this year spotlighting film, digital media, and immersive installations. The exhibition premiered at the V&A in South Kensington from November 2024 to March 2025, and is now on display in Bradford until 17 August 2025. The exhibition is also part of the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture programme.
It showcases artists from across the Middle East and South Asia, exploring identity, heritage, and contemporary life through powerful new media works. Seven artists were selected from over 300 submissions to an open call in 2023. Their work explores themes such as cultural identity, migration, ecology, spiritual life, community and alternative museum-making through film, VR, sound and installation.
The winning artist Khandakar Ohida is a visual artist and filmmaker based between Kolkata and New Delhi. Her work spans lens-based media, film installations, drawing and painting, often exploring personal memory, marginalised voices, collective protest, resistance, decolonisation and nonlinear narratives.
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.
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.
The seven finalists were selected from over 300 submissions 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.
Councillor Sarah Ferriby - Bradford Council’s Executive Member for Healthy People and Places: “I’m thrilled that this prestigious exhibition has come to the Bradford district and that this powerful artwork can be enjoyed by people from across the district and beyond without having to travel to London If you’ve not been to the exhibition you’ve not long until it heads off on its international tour.”
Tristram Hunt - The chair of the Jameel Prize jury, V&A Director: “I am delighted that we have selected such an impressive shortlist for the seventh Jameel Prize. Over the last 15 years the Prize has explored diverse responses to Islamic traditions and identities in many media. The V&A has worked alongside Bradford District Museums & Galleries for many years, sharing expertise and creating opportunities for more people to engage with art and design in meaningful ways. Jameel Prize: Moving Images exemplifies this endeavour by encouraging reflection on contemporary practice and engagement with Islamic art, culture, history, society and ideas.
"Through DesignLab Nation, part of the V&A’s National Schools Programme bringing together secondary schools in partnership with regional museums, designers, and industry, the V&A has collaborated with Bradford Museums since 2022 engaging students and supporting teachers in the delivery of the Design and Technology GCSE through teacher development strands and focussing on the rich collections across this fantastic city.”
Antonia Carver - Director, Art Jameel: "After collaborating with the V&A and Bradford District Museums and Galleries on DesignLab Nation, which saw objects from the V&A's Jameel Gallery, one of the world's greatest collections of Islamic Art, travel to Bradford to 'meet' school children, we are delighted to tour the Jameel Prize exhibition for the first time in the UK, to mark and celebrate Bradford 2025. At Art Jameel, our guiding principles are that the arts are fundamental to life and (should be) accessible for all, and to see such compelling works by some of the most innovative international artists of our times, here in one of the UK's most diverse and dynamic cities, is a source of hope and positivity in these troubled times. This is an opportunity to share the Prize with a broad audience, and part of a wider plan to tour the show nationally and internationally, including to Hayy Jameel, Jeddah's home for the arts, Saudi Arabia. We once again congratulate Khandakar Ohida and the shortlisted artists in this seventh edition of the Prize, as well as Rachel Dedman, Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the V&A.”
