The Ground Beneath Me – Laisul Hoque
Friday 6th February 2026 – Sunday 12th April 2026 , 10:00am to 4:00pm
Laisul Hoque premieres a new installation, film, and works on paper, exploring microhistories and personal memory alongside the context of political shifts and turmoil in Bangladesh.
Join us at the Nunnery Gallery and Café on Thursday 5th February 6-9pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition
The Ground Beneath Me is told from the position of someone standing inside the artist’s bedroom, wondering where he is, what he is doing, and when he will return. Hoque has relocated his entire bedroom – including every object, item of furniture, and personal artefact accumulated during his life in London – to the centre of the gallery. Laid out to the exact floorplan of the original space, the installation forms a room within a room. Without walls, it remains exposed and held in suspension.
Called away to Bangladesh due to his father’s ill health, Hoque spent the past year living and travelling away from this room. During this time, he tended to familial responsibilities while navigating complex emotional terrain and a persistent longing to return, as Bangladesh experienced the aftermath of a turbulent political transition following the fall of a party that had been in power from 2009 to 2024*. In the artist’s absence, the room holds pain and frustration, offering a view of a life paused, sustained, and left behind. Visitors are invited to move through and engage with the space, revisiting their own memories.
At the centre of the installation hangs a cardboard lampshade, suspended from above. Constructed as an architectural model of the General Assembly Hall in the National Parliament Building of Bangladesh, it illuminates the artist’s belongings that were once stored in his rented room in London.
The surrounding gallery walls present Scenes from Departure (2025), a series of drawn boarding passes that mark repeated departures from the room. Each ticket is overlaid with scenes depicting fleeting encounters, periods of despair, and moments of tranquillity. These drawings record images the artist wanted to photograph but could not, or felt it was not right to capture, yet still wished to remember. Together, they trace where he was while the room remained still.
Further along the nave of the Nunnery Gallery, an excerpt from Hoque’s new film Legacy of a Heart’s Injury (2026) premieres. The film forms part of a longer work currently being developed as part of the Film London 2025–26 FLAMIN Fellowship. It documents a conversation between the artist and his friend as they reflect on the grief they separately experienced in 2009**. For Hoque, this was a time of constant emergency, marked by his father’s illness alongside a national crisis. During that same period, his friend lost her father. After losing contact, they reconnected fifteen years later.
Throughout the film, family archives – including photographs, holiday videos, and medical records – become entry points for discussing wider political histories. Through conversation, the friends revisit their parallel experiences in an attempt to understand both personal and national events. The film concludes with the artist’s father sitting on a beach, speaking about politics. Personal loss and public history interlace, as grief, survival, and national memory move alongside one another.
This film contains flashing lights and discussions of death and violence, which may be distressing for some viewers
All installation images, courtesy Nunnery Gallery, photo Rob Harris
Notes
* In July 2024, a mass uprising occurred in Bangladesh, overthrowing a political party that had been in power for 15 years and resulting in a significant civilian death toll. Shortly after, an interim government was established and preparations began for an election in 2026. As the country navigated a tumultuous period of political restructuring, civil insecurity, and social unrest, crises in Hoque’s personal and public life coincided when his father became critically ill.
** In February 2009, 15 years before the July 2024 mass uprising, the Bangladesh Rifles revolt took place in Dhaka, during which members of Border Guard Bangladesh seized its headquarters and killed 57 senior army officers. The revolt was driven by allegations of corruption and demands for structural reform in the military. The political party that was overthrown in 2024, then recently in power, launched an investigation with support from the FBI and Scotland Yard. Following this investigation in 2013, the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Court sentenced 152 people to death and 161 to life imprisonment; 256 received prison terms of three to ten years, while 277 were acquitted. Following the fall of the ruling party in September 2024, a new commission was established to reopen the investigation. In November 2025, the commission released its findings, concluding that the massacre in 2009 had been a planned operation, citing extensive evidence of involvement by the political party then in power, with external support from other countries. It was during this same period in Hoque’s childhood that his father was first diagnosed with a critical illness.
References and further reading
Ramesh, Randeep. Troops’ revolt rocks Bangladesh capital. The Guardian, 25 Feb 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/25/bangladesh-mutiny-soldiers
Reuters. Scotland Yard team in Bangladesh for mutiny probe. 11 Mar 2009. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/scotland-yard-team-in-bangladesh-for-mutiny-probe-idUSTRE52A1CN/
BBC News. Bangladesh tries 800 soldiers for bloody 2009 mutiny. 5 Jan 2011. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12123651
Associated Press. 152 Bangladeshis Sentenced to Death Over 2009 Border Guard Mutiny. The Guardian, 5 Nov. 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/05/bangladesh-sentences-152-people-to-death
Al Jazeera. Bangladesh to investigate 2009 paramilitary mutiny massacre. 26 Dec 2024. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/26/bangladesh-to-investigate-2009-paramilitary-mutiny-massacre
Ahmed, Redwan, and Hannah Ellis-Petersen. Bangladesh student protests turn into ‘mass movement against a dictator’. The Guardian, 26 Jul 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/26/bangladesh-student-protests-mass-movement-against-dictator
Mason, Rowena. What Led to Bangladesh Trial of Former UK Minister Tulip Siddiq in Her Absence? The Guardian, 1 Dec. 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/what-led-to-bangladesh-trial-of-former-uk-minister-tulip-siddiq
Haider, Zia. In the Light of What We Know. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.
Choudhury, Numair Atif. Babu Bangladesh!. HarperCollins India / Fourth Estate, 2019.
Mohamed, Naeem. Midnight’s Third Child. Nokta, 2023.
About Laisul Hoque
Laisul Hoque was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he studied BA English Literature at North South University before completing an MA in Contemporary Photography, Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, UAL, London. Hoque was a finalist for the 2024 CIRCA Prize. Drawing from his memories and lived experiences, he creates image-based works and installations that explore and decode microhistories and their global impacts. His practice investigates communication, miscommunication, and adopts a reparative reading of the past.
Selected exhibitions / screenings include An Ode to All the Flavours, a day-long Exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, Group Screening in the International Program, EXPERIMENTA, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, screened at Piccadilly Lights screen, London, Limes Kurfürstendamm screen, Berlin, Essilor Luxottica screen in Cadorna Square, Milan, as part of CIRCA Prize 2024; An Ode to All the Flavours, Solo Exhibition, Kobi Nazrul Centre, London (2024); The Purpose was to Document the Other Side, Solo Screening, Studio 6/6, Dhaka (2024); Shorts: Joyful Lands, Joyful Bodies, Chronic Youth Film Festival, Group Screening, Barbican Centre, London (2024); I Don’t Call Enough but I’m Here Now, Solo Exhibition, Oitij-jo, London (2024).
Please click here to visit Laisul Hoque’s website.
About the East London Art Prize
The East London Art Prize celebrates and promotes the incredible talent and diversity of art made in the cultural hive of east London. Proudly sponsored by Minerva and Prue MacLeod, the winner receives a cash prize of £15,000 and a solo exhibition at our Nunnery Gallery. The runner-up second prize is a year’s studio space with Bow Arts.
More than just a competition, the Prize is supported by organisations and institutions working within its catchment boroughs, including the British Council, Dulux, The Line, London College of Fashion, London Legacy Development Corporation, University College London, V&A East and Whitechapel Gallery. This creates a network that enables the Prize to uniquely support and open up opportunities for artists through an associated events programme, highlighting new connections, and providing resources.
The 2025 Prize judges are Louise Benson (Director of Digital, ArtReview Magazine), Phoebe Collings-James (Artist), Jonny Tanna (Director, Harlesden High Street) and Sam Wilkinson (Head of Public Art and Cultural Engagement, UCL).
Access information
The Nunnery Gallery and Cafe have step-free access throughout from street level, including to the accessible toilet, and is service animal friendly. This venue does not have a hearing loop system.
Accessible parking is not available on-site but blue badge parking can be found 500m away on Fairfield Road.
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Opening hours: Wed-Sun, 10am to 4pm
Address: Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ
Nearest station(s): Bow Road (District and Hammersmith and City lines) is a 6-minute walk away, and Bow Church (DLR) is a 3-minute walk away.
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