James Webb: Let the Darkness be a Doorway

In the exhibition “Let the Darkness Be a Doorway”, Webb explores intersections between the sacred, the invisible, and the nuclear. “Knowing the Ways” (2024) opens the show with a sound installation based on Hildegard of Bingen’s compositions. Performed in Sweden’s decommissioned KTH Reactor Hall, the choir’s voices were captured with sixteen microphones to document the space’s acoustics. Broadcast through six loudspeakers, the installation merges architectural materiality with spiritual resonance, creating a site-specific sonic environment. In “The Tongue Is a Flame | The Flame Is a Tongue” (2025), a red-and-gold banner evokes mystical visions of flames and tongues inspired by Hildegard’s manuscript “Scivias”, linking historical mysticism to Webb’s personal neurological experiences. The video work “The Sun Will Eat Its Children” (2025) meditates on sunlight on Tranebärssjön, a former uranium mine lake, juxtaposing shimmering surfaces with concealed industrial memory. A photograph of a blue sky, taken from the Nagasaki atomic bomb hypocentre, references his earlier 2005 work “Untitled (9th August)” and functions as a minimalist memorial, emphasising absence and spectral presence. Through these works, the exhibition investigates perception, memory, and the human encounter with technological and spiritual registers, inviting viewers to experience the sacred within modernity as a critical lens rather than comfort.