On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, James Webb presents his work Untitled (9th August), created in 2005 during his residency at CCA Kitakyushu, Japan.
Deeply moved by his visit to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, Webb was struck not so much by the objects on display as by the descriptive texts—mostly in Japanese, with a few translated into English. These fragments of narrative, both laconic and evocative, left a lasting impression on him.
For this installation, Webb copied fifty of the English captions onto individual museum cards. This minimalist approach lends each description weight and gravity, allowing the surrounding emptiness to resonate with the absence—or spectral presence—of the vanished objects.