Swinton unpacked the raiment of films past like so many treasures salvaged from oblivion – VOGUE

Saillard once again delivers a perfect performance, which allows “this assembly of inert bodies” to live again, and better – TOUTE LA CULTURE

Cinema artefacts have this one fantasy moment, and that’s it – Tilda Swinton

An original performance created by French fashion and art historian Olivier Saillard and the iconic, multi-award-winning Scotch actor, Tilda Swinton, “Embodying Pasolini” brings together a wide selection of costumes from the films of Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, live, for the very first time.

Designed by Danilo Donati and prepared by the Farani workshop, outfits from The Gospel According to “St. Matthew”, “Oedipus Rex”,”Arabian Nights” and “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” prove Pasolini and Donati’s abundant and long-term collaboration. This performance retraces the process of how the pieces were discovered, identified, and assessed until they were brought onto the stage and worn again, which was originally prohibited. 

As if being a silent mannequin captive to its memory, Saillard and Swinton try on nearly thirty costumes, dresses, coats, and hats. They make a brief appearance for a daring try-on session, with audience members as witnesses. Captured in fabrics, Swinton doesn’t represent the correspondent characters. Instead, her role is precisely the lack of a role. Her presence sheds light on how the now explicitly orphaned costumes are separated from the body, the actors and the films, situated in their soulful and truthful existence.

Tilda Swinton, UK

Tilda Swinton, known for her collaborations with directors like Derek Jarman and Jim Jarmusch, gained acclaim for roles in Orlando and Michael Clayton, winning BAFTA and Academy Awards. She’s worked with diverse filmmakers including Pedro Almodóvar, Wes Anderson, and Bong Joon Ho. In 2020, she received a BFI Fellowship and a Leon d’Oro at the Venice Film Festival. Her recent projects include “Three Thousand Years Of Longing”, “Asteroid City”, and “The Eternal Daughter”. Swinton, a mother of twins, resides in the Scottish Highlands.

Olivier Saillard, FR

Olivier Saillard is a graduate in art history. In 1995, he was appointed director of the Marseille Fashion Museum; in 2000, he became responsible for the “Fashion” exhibition programming at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and in 2010, director of the Palais Galliera, the City of Paris Fashion Museum. Since 2017, he has been the director of the Alaïa Foundation and the artistic director for image and culture at J.M. Weston (since 2018). He has authored several works, including “An Ideal History of Contemporary Fashion” (Textuel, 2009), “The Fashion Book” at Robert Laffont (2019), and major exhibitions such as “Yohji Yamamoto: Just Clothes,” “Christian Lacroix: A History of Clothes” at the Arts Décoratifs; “Azzedine Alaïa,” “Jeanne Lanvin” at the Palais Galliera; “Madame Grès: Couture at Work,” “Balenciaga: The Work in Black” at the Bourdelle Museum, and most recently, “The Ephemeral Fashion Museum” at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. In 2005, Olivier Saillard was a recipient of the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto. Since then, he has been conducting a poetic reflection presented in the form of performances. The Impossible Wardrobe, Eternity Dress, and Cloakroom, and recently Embodying Pasolini with Tilda Swinton at the Festival d’Automne in Paris; Sur-Exposition with Charlotte Rampling, Couture Essentielle…, nearly thirty performances have thus been initiated over 20 years… In 2018, he founded “Moda Povera,” a project dedicated to poetic, performative, and pedagogical clothing creation, based on the transformation of ordinary and modest clothes magnified by haute couture knowledge and techniques.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund – a state special-purpose fund.

The event is partnered by Grupa MTP.