At a glance
A futuristic meditation on ecological collapse and transformation staged inside an eighteenth-century pavilion beside one of Rome’s most classical collections.
Meet the artist
Why go
Julien’s film moves between Giulio Romano’s Palazzo Te, California redwoods and Charles Jencks’s Cosmic House. Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie appear as prophetic figures inspired by science fiction, mythology and writers such as Octavia E. Butler and Donna Haraway.
You'll see
The original multi-screen work reimagined as a single-channel projection multiplied and fragmented by mirrors.
Artlovers Tip
Worth a detour. Intellectually ambitious and visually sumptuous, although the compressed Roman installation cannot reproduce the scale of its multi-screen versions. Visit the Uccelliera before entering the main Borghese collection. The transition from Julien’s moving reflections to Bernini’s marble transformations is especially effective.
Inside the exhibition
British filmmaker Isaac Julien has spent four decades expanding cinema into immersive installation. Here, metamorphosis is both subject and viewing mechanism: identities, species, buildings and projected images refuse to remain fixed.
