The Moon Will Not Stay Hidden Forever

James Webb's work is characterized by a poetic sensibility, an exploration of multiple histories, mythologies, places and contexts. Now Liljevalchs welcomes James Webb's first major solo exhibition in his new hometown of Stockholm - The Moon Will Not Stay Hidden Forever.  

With The Moon Will Not Stay Hidden Forever, Webb takes on Sweden, Stockholm and Liljevalchs with his site-specific interventions and installations. Some of the artworks that visitors will encounter are a Viking sword transformed by a series of personal questions, an ensemble singing an 873-year-old hymn inside R1's nuclear reactor hall, flags made from a vision of a saint, and the song of an alien bird in the Blue Gate garden.

Out in the garden between Liljevalchs and the Blue Gate, you can hear the song of a bird, native to Tasmania. Webb's family was sent to Tasmania as convicts in the early 1900s. It is likely that the artist's ancestors heard the bird's song, and by placing the song in Liljevalchs' garden in Webb's new hometown of Stockholm, a circle of movement through time and space is completed.

James Webb (born 1975 in Kimberley, South Africa) lives and works in Stockholm. In Sweden, Webb's work has previously been exhibited at Konsthall C (2022), Borås Konstbiennal (2021), Norrtälje Konsthall (2018), Historiska Museet (2016) and Wanås Konst (2015). Major group exhibitions include the 8th and 16th Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007 & 2022), the 13th Dakar Biennial (2018), the 4th Prospect Triennial in New Orleans (2017), the 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017), the 12th Bienal de la Habana (2015) and the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).

Photo: Ola Myrin, Swedish Museum of History/SHM (CC BY).