Gil Mualem-Doron East Sussex, United Kingdom

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I am a multi-disciplinary artist, with 15 years of experience of socially engaged art / social practices projects. My work is informed by my Ph.D. thesis, activism and personal experience as a mix race person and migrant. Much of my work concentrates on themes of place and belonging, identify and social justice using photography, digital art and installations.

My socially engaged practice spans more than twenty years of art, education, environmental campaigning and collaborative work with marginalised communities. As founder and Co-Creative Director of SEAS—Socially Engaged Art Salon—I have developed projects with migrants, refugees, LGBTQ+ people, Black and Global Majority communities, young people, and groups experiencing social or economic exclusion. Across these projects, I use photography, performance, installation and participatory making to create spaces in which people can contribute their experiences and shape how they are represented.

My long-term project 'No Man’s Lands' uses co-authored photography, testimony and performance to explore migration, queerness and precarious belonging. Developed through residencies and collaborations in the UK, Israel–Palestine, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Germany and Brazil, it enables participants to influence locations, clothing, poses and modes of representation. 'Present Absentees', created with internally displaced Palestinians, combined portraiture and testimony with architectural research into displacement, erased villages and contested landscapes. 'New Union Flag' has engaged thousands of participants through textile, identity and belonging workshops at Tate Modern, Turner Contemporary, Southbank Centre and museums across the UK.

Environmental and climate justice have become increasingly central to my work. During a residency in Kalpitiya, Sri Lanka, I developed 'Sea of Change/The Wasteland' with young people from a fishing community. Activities included beach clean-ups, mask and jewellery making, wearable sculptures, fashion photography, performance, filmmaking and cyanotype workshops using recovered plastic. 'Interweaving Spaces', exhibited at Worthing Museum in 2024 and at NOBA in Norway, combined an immersive kelp-inspired textile installation, underwater film, sound recordings made with BPOC and trans sea swimmers, creative workshops and an eco-protest dance performance. These two projects will particularly inform my work at Connecting Threads, including my proposed use of plastic and textile waste, collaborative photography, performance and immersive installation.

I also initiated and worked with the Sussex BPOC Photography Collective on 'Haunted Nature', exploring colonial histories embedded in landscape and ecology, and 'Outlooks on the English Countryside', using collective walking and photography to examine race, access and belonging. Further socially engaged projects involving young people and refugees include 'Com-Fashion', exhibited at Colonnade House in Worthing; 'Flags of Diversity', presented at Tate Modern in a group exhibition as well as solo project at Tate Late and in a solo three-month exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester; and 'Present Absentees', exhibited at P21 Gallery in London and the Jewish Museum Vienna.

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