A Renaissance dream reimagined: Sir Isaac Julien’s major new installation opens in Italy
Acclaimed artist, filmmaker, and Distinguished Professor of The Arts and History of Consciousness Isaac Julien has created a Renaissance-inspired dreamscape for the 21st century.
By Dan White
Opening on October 4 in Mantua, Italy, All That Changes You. Metamorphosis features internationally celebrated actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie. They appear as prophetic figures, seemingly conjured from frescoes, slipping fluidly across time.
Marking the 500th anniversary of the Palazzo Te, a sumptuous palace built for the Duke of Mantua, Julien’s ten-screen film installation unfolds within the palace’s historic rooms.
Julien has long been celebrated for his visually poetic and politically resonant film and video installations.
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His recent exhibitions include Isaac Julien: I Dream a World at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (2025), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement at MASP in São Paulo (2025), Lessons of the Hour at MoMA in New York (2024), and Once Again… (Statues Never Die) at the Whitney Biennial (2024).
An innovative exhibition in an iconic location
The palazzo, widely considered Renaissance master Giulio Romano’s greatest work, provides an opulent, historically charged backdrop for an installation that explores a range of evocative locations, from the postmodernist Cosmic House in London, designed by Charles Jencks, to the Kramlich Collection in Napa Valley and the ancient redwood forests of northern California.
Originally conceived to embody pleasure and power, the palazzo inspired the installation, parts of which were filmed on-site. In a recent interview, Julien called the palazzo “the aesthetic, political and mythological dream” of Romano, “a vision rich with fantasy and allegory that challenges contemporary visual conventions.”
“Renowned for its bold, playful architecture and enchanted, lifelike frescoes, the palazzo serves as both a visual and conceptual foundation for Isaac Julien’s immersive installation,” said exhibition curator Lorenzo Giusti. He described the new exhibition as a redefinition of visual language, where metamorphosis becomes a poetic and political gesture.
“Harnessing the semantic depth and visual splendor of this iconic space, Julien explores and reframes the concept of metamorphosis through a contemporary lens, bringing Romano’s legacy into dialogue with the present era,” Giusti added.
These diverse landscapes deepen the installation’s central themes of time, transformation, and the ethereal.
The result is a filmed meditation on beauty and politics, Giusti noted.
Valuable mentor, global impact
This project marks yet another high point in Julien’s illustrious career.
In 2019, he co-founded the Isaac Julien Lab at UC Santa Cruz alongside noted curator and History of Consciousness professor Mark Nash. The lab serves as an interdisciplinary space for research, experimentation, and visual production, supporting both students and emerging artists.
In 2024, Julien and Nash partnered with The Humanities Institute to create the Moving Image Lab, a project funded by the Mellon Foundation. The lab is directly funding the exhibition in Italy.
Last year, Julien’s UC Santa Cruz course What Freedom Is To Me—named after one of his installations—gave students the rare opportunity to engage with a globally recognized artist on both conceptual and practical levels.
In 2022, Julien was knighted by Queen Elizabeth during her Platinum Jubilee celebration, in recognition of his contributions to diversity and inclusion in the arts.
Reflecting on the honor and his expansive body of work, Julien remarked, “I think about the sheer amount of concentration one needs to do the work. One must try to not let anything—including the high points—detract from that. It’s important to keep one’s head in place, as it were, and one’s feet firmly on the ground.”
Original Link: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/09/a-renaissance-dream-reimagined-sir-isaac-juliens-major-new-installation-opens-in-italy/