Gil Mualem-Doron is an artist, researcher, and community facilitator. His work is multidisciplinary, socially engaged, active and political; and he incorporates art, architecture and urban culture. His artistic activities integrate various media, from drawing and photography to installations and performances. They also include small acts, such as walking, eating, demonstrating, burning, guiding, conversing, collecting garbage, and donating blood.
Gil’s project New Union Flag is a proposal for an alternative flag for the UK. The New Union Flag is a modified version of the Union Jack, which includes traditional textile designs of former colonised communities and of various ethnic and national groups. The various textiles are placed on the Union Jack in relation to the geographical locations from which they originated. The flag also contains numerous small boats made from jiffy cloths representing past and present migration to and from the Britain.
The project was piloted in 2014 and has engaged thousands of people through gallery exhibitions (Packham Platform, Hoxton Arches, Turner Contemporary), as part of Who Are We? Project at Tate Exchange, in events at cultural institutes, in community gatherings, and in pro-refugees and LGBT+ rallies. The project has been presented in various formats from agitprops to room installations, and is accompanied by participatory photo shoots, conversations, and workshops. Gil has also taken the project into schools with a format of ‘DIY Diversity Workshops’, during which school children explore their backgrounds, favourite foods, neighbourhoods, and other ways they define their home.
As part of the Counterpoints Arts’ commissioned tour New Union Flag has traveled to Swindon during Refugee Week 2017, Blackpool Beach, Manchester and Liverpool. In 2017, The New Union Project (2015 – ) / The Stall (2017) will tour nationally, culminating in a formal petition being made to parliament to adopt it as the official UK flag.
Gil is the founder of SEAS (Socially Engaged Art Salon) in Brighton: a unique home-gallery, fulfilling the need for a dedicated space for socially engaged art. Launched in May 2016, SEAS has already had two group exhibitions (Displacement#1 – during Brighton Festival and Photography as Social Practice – for Brighton Photo Fringe 2016).
