Artists

Tilda Swinton

Press release

Tilda Swinton, an iconic, daring performer and subversive visual artist, takes center stage in a personal exhibition that brings together new and past works by eight of her close artistic collaborators and friends: Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The performer, visual artist, and fashion icon Tilda Swinton meets her longtime collaborators and friends in a singular, deeply personal exhibition at the Onassis Foundation’s new space, Onassis Ready. Director Luca Guadagnino creates an intimate new portrait of her in the form of a short film and a sculptural work. With re-edited footage, a new soundtrack, and manipulated imagery, Jim Jarmusch transforms scenes from his surreal zombie film, "The Dead Don’t Die" (2019), into an entirely new installation. Together with acclaimed fashion historian Olivier Saillard, Swinton will present a multi-day presentation that brings to life a unique wardrobe, featuring garments from her personal collection, film costumes, red-carpet looks, and family heirlooms. Photographer Tim Walker visited Swinton at her family home for a portrait series exploring lineage and the continuity of the place. Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul will create a meditative, immersive installation. Pedro Almodóvar presents "The Human Voice" (2020) for the first time as an installation. With her childhood friend and filmmaker Joanna Hogg, Swinton will unveil "Flat 19", a multimedia reconstruction of her London apartment in the 1980s and an exploration of memory, space, and personal history. Finally, Swinton pays tribute to one of her greatest influences, director Derek Jarman (1942–1994), with whom she collaborated on seven feature films. Tilda Swinton comments: “With the honor of this extraordinary invitation, I have had the opportunity to reflect on the mechanics of my working practice over the past forty years. And to come to rest on the—ever present—bedrock and battery of the close fellowships I found from the very first and continue to rely upon to this day. In focusing attention on profoundly enriching creative relationships in my life, we share the narratives and atmospheres that inspire us: we offer new work, especially commissioned for this exhibition, as the most recent gestures borne out of various companionable conversations that keep me curious, engaged and nourished. An ongoing—and unbroken—thread of breadcrumbs through the wood, new leaves on long-established trees. The perpetual seedbed. I should be so lucky, in the gift of such an invitation, in such friends and in such a life.” Nature, memories, the essence of memory itself, ancestors and spirits, friendships and fellowships, and the liminal space of creation—these are central themes in Swinton’s work, frequently explored alongside her creative collaborators. In "Ongoing", they delve into these concepts through various forms. The exhibition highlights Swinton’s remarkable career in eight chapters, focused on Swinton’s closest collaborators. The first chapter of the exhibition honors innovative filmmaker, writer, gardener, activist and artist Derek Jarman (1942-1994), Swinton’s first major collaborative partner. Together, they created nine films, serving as each other’s muse and mentor. This presentation, enriched with archival material from Swinton’s archive, includes a large-screen installation showcasing“The Last of England” (1987), as well as a special installation featuring previously unseen Super8 footage from Jarman’s personal collection. “The Last of England” is a poetic and urgent reflection on the decline of traditional English culture in the 1980s, named after Ford Madox Brown’s painting of the same name. Together with filmmaker Joanna Hogg, with whom Swinton grew up and made her first films, she has made an installation piece, Flat 19. This project recreates the apartment where Swinton lived in London during the 1980s and 1990s, a space where Swinton collaborated on several early projects. The multi-media installation blends image, sound, and scenery to evoke the physical and emotional essence of the flat. Flat 19 is not only a meticulous recreation of the space but also an exploration of memory and how spaces shape our histories. The installation delves into the intimate relationship between the environment and personal history, examining how these spaces are in constant dialogue with the memories and experiences they hold. Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino created a new intimate portrait of Tilda Swinton, in film and silver. He has made a short film and a sculpture, both as an ode to Swinton. Guadagnino collaborated several times with Tilda Swinton, in the films “The Protagonists” (1999), “Io sono amore” (2010), “A Bigger Splash” (2015), and “Suspiria” (2017). The Thai independent film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has shot a new film at Tilda’s home ground in Kimmerghame. This intimate, meditative two-screen work delves into themes they have explored for years, such as liminal states between being present, creating and sleeping. Together, they previously created a breathtaking, poetic exploration of time and memory with the film “Memoria” (2021). For the first time, Pedro Almodóvar presents his short film “The Human” Voice as an installation piece. Written and directed by Almodóvar in 2020, the film is based on Jean Cocteau’s play of the same name. Starring Tilda Swinton in a mesmerizing performance, it also marks Almodóvar’s first English-language work. With his signature attention to detail, stunning design, and bold colors, the film creates a vivid setting that blurs the line between life and theater. Jim Jarmusch has developed a new work for the exhibition at Eye, using fragments from his film “The Dead Don’t Die.” Here, in an entirely new installation developed especially for the exhibition, you can see a two-channel edit of “The Dead Don’t Die” (2018), in which Tilda Swinton plays the idiosyncratic character Zelda Winston. The unremarkable provincial town of Centerville is the stage of an encounter between aliens and zombies. This dual-screen installation is accompanied by a new soundtrack by Jarmusch’s band Sqürl. In 2025, photographer Tim Walker completed a photoshoot with Tilda Swinton at her family home. The resulting series deeply explores her Scottish ancestry, weaving themes of family history, memory, and the spectral presence of the past. The images evoke a connection to the land, reflecting the interplay between nature, ancestral roots, and the lingering ghosts of generations before.