Tilda Swinton – Ongoing: A Portrait in Evolution

This autumn, Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum will unveil Tilda Swinton – Ongoing, a deeply personal retrospective curated by the actress herself. Far from a conventional career chronicle, the exhibition is an immersive meditation on artistic kinship, creative alchemy, and the quietly radical force of collaboration.

Swinton’s ethereal screen presence may be instantly recognizable, but Ongoing ventures well beyond performance. Newly commissioned works are interwoven with archival treasures, tracing a four-decade odyssey through cinema, fashion, and visual art — a tapestry as enigmatic and arresting as the woman herself.

To describe Swinton as “fluid” is no longer metaphor — it’s truth. She dissolves boundaries with disarming ease, moving from blockbuster epics to conceptual art, couture campaigns to intimate indie films, always retaining her otherworldly clarity. She belongs everywhere and nowhere.

Eight new pieces anchor the exhibition, each created in dialogue with longtime collaborators. Among them: Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Jim Jarmusch, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul — auteurs who have helped shape, and been shaped by, Swinton’s singular screen identity.

Also on view: an installation by Olivier Saillard, a poetic visual collaboration with fashion photographer Tim Walker, and rare archival material from the late Derek Jarman, who gave Swinton her first film role in Caravaggio (1986). In its presence, the exhibition becomes an offering — both remembrance and renewal.

Ongoing is not just a tribute — it is a shift. A rebalancing of cinematic authorship that centers the actor not as vessel, but as visionary. Swinton is not merely interpreted; she is co-creator, muse, mirror.

For Swinton, these works chart relationships that transcend the professional. They are intimate, elemental, at times transcendent. “New leaves on ancient, deep-rooted trees,” she says — an apt metaphor for an artist who remains in constant bloom.

Alongside the exhibition, Eye will host a curated program of screenings, conversations, and public events exploring Swinton’s filmography in new light. Tilda Swinton – Ongoing opens on 28 September 2025 and runs through 8 February 2026 — a season-long invitation to witness an icon in flux.