Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (2020)

Gil Mualem-Doron

Gil Mualem-Doron is an award-wining socially and politically engaged artist working in various media; primarily photography, digital art, installation and performance using participatory practices. His work investigates issues such as urban history, social justice, identity, transcultural aesthetics, migrations and displacement. 

His work has been exhibited extensively in the UK and abroad including Tate Modern, the Turner Contemporary, Liverpool Museum, People’s History Museum, Turner Contemporary, Rich Mix London, ONCA (Brighton) Haifa Museum of Art (Israel), East66 – Centre for Urban Research (Amsterdam), and Detroit – Centre for Urban Ecology. 

The short video work (06:55) Twinkle Twinkle Little Star highlights the death of refugee children while crossing the Mediterranean and the betrayal of UN's member countries to the promise given to refugees in the 1951 Refugee Convention.

The film depicts a burning crib on a shore at dusk.

The film's sound is composed of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star lullaby tune which refers to the traveller at the dark night:

"Then the traveller in the dark,

Thank you for your tiny spark,

He could not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so."

However, the lullaby lyrics in the film's soundtrack is replaced by the 1951 Refugee Convention legal document.

Concept and editing: Gil Mualem-Doron

Photography - Joe Hartman

Singing - Juliet Russell, Vocal Explosion.

Violin - Geoff Falk.

The text from the 1951 Refugee Convention in the video can be read here:

The high contracting parties,

considering that the Charter of the United Nations

and the Universal Declaration

of Human Rights

approved on 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly

have affirmed the principle that

human beings

shall enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms

without discrimination,

considering that the United Nations has,

on various occasions,

manifested its profound concern for refugees

and endeavoured to assure refugees

the widest possible exercise of these fundamental rights and freedoms,

considering that it is desirable to revise and consolidate previous international agreements relating to the status of

refugees

and to extend the scope of and protection accorded

by such instruments by means of a new agreement,

considering that the grant of asylum may place unduly heavy burdens on certain countries,

and that a satisfactory solution of a problem of which

the United Nations has recognized

the international scope and nature cannot therefore be achieved

without international co-operation,

expressing the wish that all States,

recognizing

the social and humanitarian nature of the problem of refugees,

will do everything within their

power

to prevent this problem from becoming a cause of tension between States,

noting that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

is charged with the task of supervising international conventions

providing for the

protection of refugees,

and recognizing that the effective co-ordination of measures

taken to deal with this problem will depend upon the co-operation of

States with the High Commission.