Mantua celebrates the 500th anniversary of Palazzo Te with a world premiere: British artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien (London, 1960) presents his new multi-screen film installation All That Changes You. Metamorphosis (2025), which can be visited from October 4, 2025 to February 1, 2026 in the renovated spaces of the palace’s Fruttiere, specially reopened for the occasion. The project, curated by Lorenzo Giusti, aims to transform Giulio Romano’s Renaissance masterpiece into a workshop of visual and conceptual exploration on the theme of metamorphosis.
The film stars two internationally renowned actresses, Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie, who embody celestial, prophetic and otherworldly entities, as if emerging directly from the 17th-century frescoes that decorate the walls of Palazzo Te. Julien’s work thus dialogues with Renaissance architecture and painting, reinterpreting them through a contemporary perspective that interweaves philosophy, anthropology, ecology and speculative fiction.
The filmic journey is not limited to the spaces of the palace: the protagonists traverse heterogeneous and symbolic environments, from Charles Jencks’ Cosmic House in London to the forests of Redwood National and State Park in California to a futuristic glass spaceship designed by Richard Found and the pavilion for the Kramlich Collection created by Herzog & de Meuron. These spaces each represent an identity of their own, serving as visual metaphors for time, memory, and the relationship between human and nonhuman.
Isaac Julien explains, "All That Changes You. Metamorphosis is set in the incredible Palazzo Te, this aesthetic, political, and mythological dream designed and built by Giulio Romano between 1525 and 1535. Through the fantasy and allegory of this new film installation, I seek to subvert the visual hegemony that dominates the technological regimes of representation. Developed in collaboration with Mark Nash, the work draws on a shared vision to reimagine the poetics of image-making."
The script, developed in collaboration with Mark Nash and Vladimir Seput, draws inspiration from literary and philosophical texts, including Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway, Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison and Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie play characters who travel through different temporalities, assuming shifting identities and discussing how to cohabit the planet with other living beings.
The installation unfolds on ten screens, creating an autonomous and oppositional repertoire of images that interrupts narrative linearity and proposes a new visual poetics. The sequences intertwine in an architectural choreography that generates an immersive, multisensory experience in which the Renaissance past, postmodern architecture and speculative future merge into a single experiential continuum.
The project is produced by Palazzo Te in collaboration with Rosenkranz Foundation, Canyon, Linda Pace Foundation, Jessica Silverman, Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation, Mellon Fund and University of California, Santa Cruz. It is part of the activities of the Cinquecentenario, promoted by the City of Mantua and organized by Palazzo Te with contributions from Regione Lombardia, Fondazione Banca Agricola Mantovana, Fondazione Comunità Mantovana and Victoria Miro, with sponsorships from Poste Italiane, BPER Banca and technical supports from Coldiretti and PlantaRegina. Media partner is Gruppo Editoriale Athesis, with support from Amici di Palazzo Te and Musei Mantovani, in synergy with Mantova città d’arte e di cultura.
|
|
| Mantua, Isaac Julien at Palazzo Te: world premiere of All That Changes You. Metamorphosis |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
