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Laisul Hoque wins East London Art Prize for his ode to Bengali flavours

The East London Art Prize was awarded at Nunnery Gallery last night for work featuring traditional Bengali sweets from local caterers, Oitij-jo Kitchen.

Bow Arts announced Laisul Hoque as the winner of the second East London Art Prize on the evening of 30 January.

The East London Art Prize, established in 2023 by Bow Arts, celebrates and promotes the diverse artistic talent of east London. As the winner of the prize, Hoque will receive a £15,000 award and will hold a solo exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow, in 2026.

Hoque’s winning work, An Ode to All the Flavours (2024), is an interactive installation piece inspired by early memories of his father sharing his favourite childhood snack. Resembling an antique, sodium-lit Bangladeshi sweet shop display counter, the work invites visitors to enjoy a mix of sweets made from fried gram flour and small balls of fried chickpea flour soaked in sugar. It also encourages contemplation on nonverbal expressions of love.

The food is freshly prepared and supplied daily by Oitij-jo Kitchen, a social enterprise working with local Bengali women to help them achieve financial independence and autonomy from entrenched patriarchal systems. Oitij-jo runs their catering operation from Rich Mix cinema on Bethnal Green Road and serves Bengali food to cinemagoers from Thursday to Sunday.

Hoque’s installation establishes Nunnery Gallery as a paid retainer client of Oitij-jo Kitchen throughout the exhibition period, supporting their mission and amplifying their social impact.

The runner-up was Lydia Newman who lives and works in Tower Hamlets. Her triptych, In the Wake of Ruin, She is Here (2024) examines inherited dialogues and internalised ideas of race, globalisation, class, and gender. Newman will be awarded a year’s free studio space at one of Bow Arts’ studio locations.

The shortlist included works by three other Tower Hamlets-based artists—Fatima Ali, Liang-Jung Chen, and Mo Langmuir—along with work by Darcey Fleming, dmstfctn, Eugene Macki, Gusty Ferro, Joseph Ijoyemi, Kuda Mushangi, and Yang Zou.

Themes of the featured artworks include migration, African diasporic perspectives, microhistories, mental health, social justice, dynamics of public space, hyperlocality, and the deployment of political narratives through cultural production with works spanning painting, sculpture, film, installation, and performance. 

This year the East London Art Prize received almost 900 submissions, all by artists and collectives living or working within the ‘E’ postcode.

The shortlist and winners were selected by Jonny Tanna, founder of Harlesden High Street; Louise Benson, Director of Digital at ArtReview; Phoebe Collins-James, artist; and Sam Wilkinson, Head of Public Art at UCL Culture.

The Prize’s shortlist exhibition is on view at the Nunnery Gallery until 13 April 2025.

If you liked this read East End filmmaker Isaac Julien named Art Icon 2024 by Whitechapel Gallery.


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