All That Changes You. Metamorphosis by Isaac Julien

Created in 2025 and inspired by Giulio Romano’s cycle of frescoes for Palazzo Te in Mantua, Isaac Julien’s film installation is presented at the Galleria Borghese. Specifically reimagined for the spaces of the Uccelliera, and curated by Lorenzo Giusti, the video installation ideally extends the exhibition “Metamorphoses. Ovid and the Arts”, dialoguing with its principal themes.

Through the immersive language of the moving image, the British filmmaker offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the concept of metamorphosis. If Ovid’s poem identifies transformation as a universal law governing humans, gods, animals and the natural world alike, Isaac Julien’s work weaves together myth, multiple temporalities, and the relationship between the human and the “more-than-human” to show how change continues to be one of the fundamental lenses through which we understand the present and imagine the future.

The film features Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie, who portray two enigmatic celestial and prophetic figures. Travelling across different eras, landscapes and architectural settings (from Palazzo Te to Charles Jencks’ Cosmic House in London and the ancient forests of Redwood National and State Park in California), they guide viewers through a meditation on transformation as a permanent condition of existence and on the possibility of imagining new relationships between human beings, the environment and other species.

Originally conceived as a ten-screen installation, the work is now presented in a single-channel version, in which the moving image is multiplied through a system of mirrors that continuously fragments and reflects it. This intervention transforms the Gallery’s 18th-century pavilion into a dynamic perceptual environment: the principle of metamorphosis is thus experienced also through the act of looking, as viewers encounter images in a constant state of duplication, refraction and transformation.