Whitechapel Gallery's Backyard Biennial: East review – a migraine-inducing mess

The Guardian's critic panned Whitechapel Gallery's new summer art festival, Backyard Biennial: East, calling the central exhibition 'East of the Aldgate Pump' a morose, meaningless, and poorly curated show. The critic argues the exhibition fails to coherently address its stated themes of migration, protest, climate, and identity, despite featuring strong individual works by artists like Marwan Bassiouni, Rachel Garfield, Adam Farah-Saad, Denzil Forrester, and Laisul Hoque. Bassiouni's photos of mosque windows are mostly not in London; Farah-Saad's installation focuses on west London's Brent Cross; and Rehana Zaman's film is set in Punjab and Scotland. The critic suggests the show feels like an exercise in ticking Arts Council England funding boxes, leaving artists' work crowbarred into a vague framework. The festival includes dozens of offsite events across east London, but the main exhibition is described as dour and heavy-handed, though Hoque's snack stand offering jhuri bundiya provides a small consolation.