A tear born of a trembling universe
A tear that forms the unspoken lamguage of the Earth
A tear that is a blueprint for a new constellation
A tear that is rain upon the blinding dust of Earth
A tear that is stardust fallen to Earth
A tear that makes the land shiver beneath its weight
A tear whose wound gives birth to a universe
A tear that fosters the seed of a new world
Tears gifted by the UN Human Rights Treaty Body on the Rights of the Child
Microscope photography: Mojca Opresnik, Slovene National Institute of Chemistry
This project extends Jasmina Cibic’s ongoing series of performative engagements with the politics of care and human rights advocacy—foregrounding the profound contradictions faced by international institutions in a world increasingly marked by genocide and the erosion of legal and ethical norms. Here, Cibic turns her lens to the current impasse of human rights action, highlighting the dissonance between the aspirational language of treaties and the stark realities of global inaction.
For this work, the artist invited members of the UN Human Rights Treaty Body on the Rights of the Child to donate their tears – intimate, corporeal testimonies to the emotional and intellectual labour embedded in the defence of human dignity. These tears were then photographed under a microscope, revealing crystalline patterns that evoke planetary or topographic surfaces. Transferred onto etched brass plates, the images recall celestial bodies suspended in space—simultaneously distant and charged with meaning.
By transforming these microcosmic traces into planetary forms, Cibic reframes human rights not as abstract principles, but as fragile, embodied terrains—constantly negotiated and perpetually under threat. These works resist monumentality and instead offer speculative cosmologies: proposals for alternative futures built from the emotional sediments of the present and the unrealised promises of the past.
In line with Cibic’s broader practice—which often interrogates the role of culture in nation-building, diplomacy, and ideological performance—this project challenges viewers to reckon with the failure of supranational ideals and the persistence of care-based resistance. Through poetic materiality and political urgency, it becomes both an act of mourning and a proposition for worldbuilding rooted in empathy, solidarity, and remembrance.