Revisiting All That Changes You by Sir Isaac Julien at Palazzo Te, I find myself still discovering new layers. Julien extends a philosophical lineage from Aristotle to Ovid into a contemporary narrative that could not be more timely.
Commissioned for the 500th anniversary of Palazzo Te, the multichannel film revitalizes Julio Romano’s frescoed rooms with Ovidian myths. Actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie appear as celestial beings, moving fluidly between epochs and architectures: from the Renaissance Palazzo to Charles Jencks’s Cosmic House in London, from Californian redwood forests to a futuristic glass pavilion.
Julien’s camera turns metamorphoses into a sensorial philosophy. Drawing on thinkers such as Donna Haraway and Octavia Butler, transformation is imagined as ecological, relational, and deeply entangled. Emotion here is not cathartic release but empathic connection; the viewer drifts across layers of time, matter, and being.
Julien asks what change truly demands of us today: respect for all species, protection of nature, the relinquishing of ego, and awareness of reality. Julien invites us to coexist to survive. This is metamorphosis as emotional intelligence for the twenty-first century: a state of responsive awareness across bodies, histories, and ecologies. Carried by images of immense beauty and emotional precision, the work does not simply reflect our moment; it challenges us to act within it.
Art Consultancy Services to the European Central Bank
IAM Project: I am very pleased to share a new chapter for IAM International Arts Management.Following a competitive tender process, IAM has been appointed to provide art consultancy services to
