Artist Laisul Hoque has responded to a recent review that called his exhibition 'meaningless', arguing that collective art projects like Backyard Biennial East are vital for reaching people who feel excluded by traditional galleries. He recounts personal experiences that shaped his view, emphasizing that meaning in art is often messy, partial, and collective.
A Personal Awakening
In 2018, Hoque encountered Reetu Sattar's 'Lost Tune' at the National Theatre of Bangladesh. The work featured musicians on scaffolding playing a single note on the harmonium, creating a hum that vibrated through him. At the time, he desperately wanted to learn an instrument, but music was forbidden in his household due to a growing sentiment in many Bangladeshi Muslim homes that it was prohibited in Islam. He felt that the past was locked away in the 'Jadu Ghor' (magic house), the Bangla word for museum.
That experience was transformative. 'It amazed me that an artist could gather so many people to commit themselves to an artwork when nobody around me seemed to believe art had any value at all,' Hoque writes. He felt art not just in his eyes and mind, but in his chest.
Encountering Art in London
After moving to the UK to study art, Hoque discovered Adam Farah Saad's exhibition at Camden Art Centre, where the smell of KA soda filled the room—a fountain bubbled it endlessly. 'It was the first time I felt art in my nose,' he says.
He also found his father's favourite childhood snack in Brick Lane's Bengali sweet shops: a mix of one sweet and one savoury item. This memory, always yellow in his mind, became the foundation for his work in 'East of the Aldgate Pump' at Whitechapel Gallery, part of the Backyard Biennial festival. Members of the Bengali social enterprise Oitij-jo Kitchen prepare and bring the snack mixture into the gallery daily, their contribution being integral to the artwork.
Meaning and Place
A recent Guardian review questioned where meaning in art resides. Hoque reflects on the Aldgate Pump, a symbol of east London's gateway, and geographer Doreen Massey's idea that places are meeting points of multiple journeys. Each artwork in the exhibition has travelled a different route to arrive there.
He shares a story about his mother visiting London in 2023. She and a friend came out of Aldgate East station and saw Whitechapel Gallery, but didn't go in. 'We were scared,' she said. Hoque wants art spaces to become less intimidating, places where people feel they belong.
Purpose of Collective Art
If projects like Backyard Biennial have a purpose, Hoque asserts, it is not to provide tidy answers but to create conditions for people to encounter one another, their histories, and themselves. 'That meaning may be messy, partial and collective. But it is not meaningless.'
