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‘The first time I felt art in my nose’: why a critic missed the point when he called my exhibition meaningless
The artist Laisul Hoque responds to a Guardian review that dismissed his exhibition, part of the collaborative East End arts festival Backyard Biennial, as "morose and meaningless." Hoque argues the critic missed the point, describing how art's meaning for him has never been purely visual or intellectual but bodily and communal, shaped by formative encounters with works that engaged smell, sound and collective participation rather than detached observation.
Hoque traces this understanding through experiences such as Reetu Sattar's Lost Tune, a group harmonium performance in Dhaka, and Adam Farah Saad's soda-scented installation at Camden Art Centre, before describing his own piece in the exhibition East of the Aldgate Pump at Whitechapel Gallery. That work, rooted in childhood memories of his father and Bengali sweet shops on Brick Lane, is maintained daily by members of the social enterprise Oitij-jo Kitchen, who prepare and bring snacks into the gallery as an ongoing, collective part of the artwork itself, reflecting themes of migration and shared meaning-making around the historic Aldgate Pump site.
In short
- Artist rebuts Guardian critic who called his exhibition meaningless
- Says art's value lies in shared, sensory, communal experience
- Piece at Whitechapel Gallery involves daily Bengali community participation
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The critic evaluated multisensory, participatory art through traditional visual and intellectual frameworks, missing the work's purpose entirely. Hoque's practice creates meaning through embodied, communal experience—smell, participation, shared cultural memory around migration—rather than visual observation. Work operating from such different premises cannot be meaningfully judged by conventional standards, which guarantees its failure on those grounds by definition.
The case against
A critic's assessment that work feels 'morose and meaningless' may identify a genuine problem—that the artist's conceptual intentions, however valid, failed to translate effectively into artistic realisation. Community participation and sensory elements alone don't guarantee success if audiences struggle to understand what's being attempted. The critic may have raised a legitimate question about execution and communication, separate from broader debates about which critical frameworks experimental art should merit.
Explained simply
Backyard Biennial is a collaborative arts festival in east London. One of its exhibitions, East of the Aldgate Pump at Whitechapel Gallery, brings together work connected to the area’s history and communities around the Aldgate Pump, a historic landmark.
Artist Laisul Hoque’s contribution draws on memories of his father and Bengali sweet shops on Brick Lane. Members of Oitij-jo Kitchen, a social enterprise, prepare and bring snacks into the gallery each day as part of the work.
The disagreement centres on what counts as meaning in art. Hoque says his work is intended to be experienced through the senses and through shared activity, as well as through looking or interpretation; the critic’s review described the exhibition as “morose and meaningless”.
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