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.