As the door of Victoria Miro opens to reveal the bright lights of the expansive gallery, the viewer is immediately drawn in, like a moth to a flame. The fluorescent glow beckons, and it may take a moment to notice the dimly lit stairs tucked to the left. With no prescribed order to follow, one must decide: ascend into the unknown or explore the bright gallery.

Climbing the stairs, the viewer finds Isaac Julien’s film commanding the top floor. The upper exhibition space recalibrates the senses: thick carpet absorbs all incidental noise, leaving only the low, resonant pulse of narration. Each of the five suspended screens showcases sequences that first feel disjunctive, refracted endlessly in surrounding mirrored walls. As the viewer adjusts to the lack of linearity, the film pieces begin to come together. Human and non-human, present and speculative future, body and architecture echo one another, bound by flux.

The film’s protagonists, Lilith (Sheila Atim) and Naomi (Gwendoline Christie), appear to embody two worldly perspectives. Lilith exists in a posthuman world shaped by irreversible damage, while Naomi is ‘grounded in the human present, searching for new ways to connect’ (Isaac Julien Press Release, 2026). Neither voice dominates the other. Instead, the film depicts a simple conversation. The central recurring scene sees Lilith and Naomi theorise in the Palazzo Te. Their shot-reverse-shots sit separately from one another, moving periodically between each of the five screens, slotted between cinematic b-roll contextualising their discussion. Navigating through time and space, the film as a whole follows the transcendental beings looking to find a semblance of reasoning and understanding within the universe. Therefore, tension does not rise from a conflict of ideas between the two but rather from an unflinching desire to grasp onto a feeling of purpose, both introspectively and existentially. 

Moving away from traditional cinema, Julien crucially places these thematic ideas in a gallery setting. Placing the film across multiple screens in a room where spectators can move freely in, around, and out creates an active sense of engagement that is less achievable elsewhere. To leave, to pick and choose which screen to engage with, to move around the room, is to change the experience. Offering no set start/finish time, no designated place to rest your eyes, no one person will exit with the same exposure to the material as the other. As Naomi and Lilith attempt to carve out their place in the cosmos through how they choose to interact with it, the viewer must do the same within the four walls of the gallery.

Naomi ponders softly on whether “maybe our task is to be capable of forming a response”. “Response” here resists immediacy; it demands duration. Moreover, the structure of the film’s seamless loop lacks closure for the viewer, insisting that responsiveness is continuous rather than conclusive. To respond requires time to listen, to feel a change, to allow agency to be distributed. In this sense, Julien proposes responsiveness as an ethical posture, one grounded not in control but in surrendering to an entanglement between one another. 

It is through the entanglement of Naomi and Lilith’s differing perspectives, alongside the varied physical spaces passing across the screens, that the work suggests affinity emerges from divergence. As ‘time folds in on itself’ (Isaac Julien Press Release, 2026), the two travel between times and spaces that ‘become the stage for transformation’. The exhibition’s reflections and refracted images resonate with the grandeur of Palazzo Te’s setting, celebrating half a millennium of its existence. The 500-year history and richly ornamented spaces are not merely backdrops but further embodiments of transformation and change.

The paintings of titans fill the wall, collapsing in on themselves as their hands reach out under rubble. They come to symbolise the very ideas of change and regeneration that drive the dialogue between the two protagonists. Echoing the very title of the piece (All That Changes You: Metamorphosis), change becomes both destruction and renewal, a cyclical force inscribed in stone, fresco, and flesh alike. 

Yet, of course, Palazzo Te is only one node in this shifting constellation of sites. Scenery of forests on fire, of rubble, and mist is laced between other architectural sites. The Cosmic House, Richard Found’s solarium, and a futuristic time travel device stand as a sharp posthuman contrast to the pillars and bricks. It is this showcasing of all forms, from the natural to the old, to the almost jarringly hyper-modern, that emphasises the tight network of all that exists. 

Descending the staircase once more, the brightness of the lower gallery feels altered. The mirrors, the murmured narration, the slow circulation of bodies upstairs linger as a subtle recalibration of perception. Julien does not offer resolution or spectacle, but something quieter and more demanding as one re-enters the gallery room: an attunement to interdependence. 

With inspiration from Donna Haraway, Julien’s exhibition transforms the viewer into an active participant in what it means to change and be changed. Haraway, quoted in the film, speaks on “becoming-with”, suggesting that “to respond was to respect; the practice of ‘becoming with’ rewove fibers” (When Species Meet, 2008). Calling back to Naomi’s question on whether humanity’s purpose is “response” and Julien’s choice of a gallery format, the viewer does not merely observe metamorphosis but enacts it. As the viewer moves towards the door to leave, they have become an involuntary part of ‘response’ and ‘becoming-with’ by simply attending. In this way, Naomi’s words resound with renewed force: “Whether you’re a human being, an insect, a microbe or a stone, all that you touch, you change, and all that you change, changes you.”

If the installation insists that transformation is constant, it also suggests that our role within it is neither heroic nor catastrophic, but relational. The gallery becomes less a site of display than a rehearsal space for coexistence, a reminder that wherever we inhabit, however briefly, we are to enter into a network of flux and mutual alteration.

All That Changes You: Metamorphosis is on show at Victoria Miro Gallery until the 21st of March.

Feature Image: Metamorphosis I (All That Changes You. Metamorphosis), 2025 © Isaac Julien, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.