This fall, the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam will do something unprecedented: hand over its sprawling galleries, screens, and stages to a single performer: Tilda Swinton. But, Swinton has never been just an actor. Tilda Swinton – Ongoing, opening September 28 and running through February 8, 2026, is a genre-bending exhibition that reframes the very notion of a retrospective; part living archive, part spiritual séance. It centers not just on Swinton’s singular career, but on her lifelong creative entanglements with artists, filmmakers, and friends. Swinton has invited eight longtime, similarly accomplished collaborators (Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul) to create new work in dialogue with her life and legacy. The results are intimate, dreamlike, and deeply personal.

Guadagnino, who cast Swinton in I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, and Suspiria, will debut a short film and a sculpture. Hogg and Swinton, childhood friends, have reconstructed Swinton’s 1980s London flat in a multimedia installation that functions as a love letter to youth and memory. And Jarmusch has reimagined his 2019 zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die into an entirely new video installation with altered worldbuilding.

Fashion also plays a leading role: Swinton and costume historian Olivier Saillard will co-present a multi-day live performance and accompanying installation based on Swinton’s own clothing— costumes, heirlooms, and red carpet looks that tell a story of embodiment through fabric. Photographer Tim Walker captures Swinton at her Scottish home, exploring lineage and place, while Weerasethakul, with whom Swinton made the spellbinding Memoria, contributes a meditative installation evoking spirit and atmosphere. Swinton has long orbited visual art, performance, and fashion as easily as she has cinema, and Eye’s parallel screening program gives space to her range. Over forty films will be shown, from cult and underground projects to blockbuster turns in The Chronicles of Narnia and Snowpiercer. Her roles are eclectic but never accidental. Each carries the trace of an artistic pact, a shared language, if you will. Screenings will be introduced by short films selected by Swinton from Eye’s archive and her own collection.

The museum will also spotlight Joanna Hogg and Derek Jarman— filmmakers who helped shape Swinton’s practice. Her long friendship with Hogg has traversed the Souvenir films and The Eternal Daughter, in which Swinton plays both daughter and mother. Jarman, who cast Swinton in her first film role (Caravaggio, 1986), is honored with a re-release of that film and a tribute installation. It’s a full-circle gesture, acknowledging the queer artist collective that formed Swinton’s creative beginnings.

Alongside the installations and screenings, a live events series titled Conversations and Specials will feature Swinton in dialogue with her collaborators. These public programs, some screenings, others intimate discussions, but all enviable opportunities to understand Swinton at her most intimate, will explore how these artistic bonds took shape. Topics range from costuming with Saillard to the logistics of long collaboration with Guadagnino, Jarmusch, Almodóvar, and Hogg. In perhaps one of the most emotional events, Swinton will reflect on Derek Jarman’s legacy with composer Simon Fisher Turner, followed by a live performance of Blue (1993), Jarman’s final film.

Tilda Swinton – Ongoing is not a greatest-hits summary. It’s an invitation into the creative ecosystem Swinton has cultivated over four decades. The works on view don’t just feature her—they emerge from her. Through performance, clothing, memory, and moving image, Swinton reveals the ongoing nature of collaboration itself: fluid, intimate, and eternally unfinished.

“Tilda Swinton – Ongoing” will be on view at the Eye Filmmuseum at IJpromenade 1, 1031 KT Amsterdam, Netherlands until February 8th, 2026.

This story appears in the pages of V156: now available for purchase!