'I do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand worlds' is a series of text pieces designed as philosophical medicines and poetic potions. Each work is presented as either a single or an installation of glass vials on shelves, with each vial containing the liquid residue of a selected text that has been transcribed in ink on soluble paper and dissolved in water. Committed to water, the text gains the possibility of entering the body through the mouth, in the style of a psychoactive drug or elixir. In this way, the words can be contained by the body, with the drinker able to possess and embody it, and be influenced from the inside. Dissolved, the ideas and images contained in the text have the agency to spill, stain, and seep. These transmuted texts, or ‘drowned anthologies’, oppose the idea of the permanence of the written record - whether on paper or in stone - and their transitory nature allows them the potential to shift and undergo subtle changes over time, so that the artwork is in a constant state of flux. In I do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand worlds (There is a light that never goes out), Mahmoud Dawish’s poem, Think of Others, is presented in a glass medicine bottle.

James Webb (born 1975, South Africa) is an interdisciplinary artist renowned for his site-specific installations that employ sound, found objects, and text to explore systems of belief and communication. Drawing on his background in religion, theatre, and advertising, Webb creates poetic and often disquieting spaces that test the boundaries between spiritual and secular experience. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including presentations at Kunsthuset Kabuso (Norway, 2025), Liljevalchs Konsthall (Stockholm, 2024), the Art Institute of Chicago (2018), and Yorkshire Sculpture Park (UK, 2016). Webb has also participated in major international exhibitions such as the Islamic Arts Biennale (2023), Documenta 14 (2017), the 16th Lyon Biennale (2022), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), and the Sharjah Biennial (2017). His work is represented in leading public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Modern (London), the Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (Washington, D.C.), MAXXI (Rome), MAC VAL (Paris), and the Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town).