Laisul Hoque’s Microhistories and Silent Revelations
written by Ella Monnerat // images by Zebayr Hossain
On a rare sunny afternoon in London, a small crowd gathers outside ZÉRUÌ, a contemporary art gallery based in Camberwell, London. The inside of the gallery is crowded, but the event goers don’t even mind the heat piling up in their bodies – they are here for a reason and that reason is, among others, Laisul Hoque.
Bangladeshi artist Laisul Hoque is an artist based in London who draws from memory and lived experiences to create image-based works and installations that explore and decode microhistories.
I first became familiar with his work after a friend suggested we should meet up for coffee. I immediately felt as if we were old friends, as we sat together for hours. Hoque’s practice is largely about communication—or the lack of it. It’s about the words we don’t say, the glances that linger too long, and the heavy silence that fills the gaps. Take The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, for instance. Premiered at the Elo Melo festival at Whitechapel Gallery on September 9th, 2023, this video work is a tender exploration of his mother’s first trip to London, captured on an old camera his dad bought back in 2004. Hoque states, There’s a rawness to it—a deep dive into familial bonds, his parents’ marriage, his upbringing, and his father’s emotional distance. It’s more than just a film; it’s a vulnerable curation of personal history. Hoque states, “I want the readers to understand the context of the camera: it was bought to show me, my brother and my mom what Europe/West was like, and now it films my Mom in that geographic location, almost like the camera's redemption arch.”
It is a wonderful film, of the kind that can only be achieved by someone with a vast interdisciplinary practice. Such is the case with Hoque, who has exhibited in Whitechapel Gallery, Toynbee Hall, and hARTslane Gallery, among others.
I Don’t Call Enough but I’m Here Now, Hoque’s first solo show, is a poignant exploration across installation, sound, photography, film, and performance. It’s reflective, honest, and cathartic—a journey through Hoque’s mind and emotional landscapes.
My favourite piece of his is How to Translate a Proverb, a performance that wrestles with globalisation's impacts on trans-generational relationships. Part of an evening group show of live performance art, this 15-minute piece was first show at hARTslane Gallery on the 1st of July 2023.
As a form of formulaic language with non-literal meaning, proverbs are notoriously difficult to translate, presenting a grey zone in cross-cultural and transgenerational bonding in the era of globalisation and hybridity.
In How to Translate a Proverb, Laisul attempts to translate the essence of the Bangla Proverb "মাথার ঘাম পায়ে ফে লা।", frequently used in familial settings throughout his upbringing, to define life. He tells me if you place it in Google Translate, only the word “sweating” will come up, but the nearest literal translation to English would be, "The sweat from your forehead, drips to your feet." The closest English proverb is, "Blood, sweat and tears."
In his performance, Laisul attempts to do exactly that, run across the gallery, jump up and down, and do burpees, and push-ups throughout an audio track. The fifteen-minute audio track holds live, raw and intimate accounts of Laisul's conversations with friends, and family, where conflicts and miscommunication arise, and how they navigate through it.
The curator holds a camera tethered to a projector projecting what they are filming. The curator directs the audience's gaze throughout the performance to the sweat that draws out of the artist's moving body, and how the sweat from his forehead drips to his feet. It is a beautiful and touching piece, and I hope to see more of Hoque’s performance art in the future.
Surrounding the performance were Hoque’s sculptures. Aptly titled I Wish I Could Tell You Exactly How I Feel, the work consists of fluorescent lights with heat-sensitive ink which go from black to clear and back again. As the lights heat up, the paint fades, and the bare light tubes are exposed—only to darken again as they cool. It’s a dance of revelation and concealment, capturing the perpetual frustration of trying to articulate the inexpressible.
Hoque’s work is marked by an astute awareness of the spaces between words, the silence that can scream louder than any speech. His art, from the documentary street photography of Dhaka to his reflective installations, is an invitation to pause and consider the stories that reside in the margins, the microhistories that define our shared human experience.
This all leads us to ZÉRUÌ gallery, where I have the chance to catch up with its founder Jerry Zerui Guo. When asked about his curation for the event, Jerry says: “We decided to put together a programme for the summer, and I have been interested in Laisul’s work for a while. His work is really touching, I reached out to him after a friend of mine told me about his work. I really like his writing as well, how he documents his upbringing and sociopolitical background.”
I went to the event with my dear friend M Lissoni, an interdisciplinary artist whose works have been shown in various institutions including theICAin London and Lismore Castle Arts in Waterford, Ireland. His practice investigates paths across iconography, archaeology, mythologies and the politics of the body – with a particular fascination for the “archive” in the context of research-based practice and critique. I brought him with me as I knew he’d be a fan of Hoque’s work. Thankfully, I was right. Of the evening at ZÉRUÌ, he says: “Laisul’s was a very profound and intimate piece of work that really captured me and the whole audience in the gallery. I think that was an incredible and generous contribution to the art scene. I believe it is very important to discuss ideas of autoethnography, bringing focus to intergenerational stories that usually get obscured in history as well as pop culture. ”
