'The Word for World' An exhibition presenting the maps of Ursula K Le Guin

I am honoured to present my contribuiton for The Word for World - An exhibition presenting the maps of Ursula K Le Guin open in London, at Architectural Association School of Architecture on 10th October 2025. It's been a great pleasure to work with Sarah Shin and Harriet Jennings (curators), Molly Evans ( Assistant Curator), Standard Deviation (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe and Sarah Shin, with Federico Campagna, MJ Harding and Rain Wu) (Exhibition Design) and Sriram Natarajan and Phalat Luangsomboon ( AA Photo-Studio Assistants). I extend my gratitude to everyone involved in making this exhibition happen and giving me the opportunity to make this body of work which consists in 22 cyanotypes on fabric, various sizes: 0.4 x 1.5 m and 0.7 x 1.5 m.

For more photographs, please click here or go to Collaborations Page.

 The Word for World  exhibition is free to visit in the AA Gallery from 10 October – 6 December 2025, Monday to Saturday, 11am–7pm.

When Ursula K Le Guin was writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World presents a selection of these images by the celebrated author, many of which have never been exhibited before, to consider how her imaginary worlds enable us to re-envision our own.

Le Guin’s maps offer journeys of consciousness beyond conventional cartography, from the archipelagos of Earthsea to the talismanic maps of Always Coming Home. Rather than remaining within known terrain, they open up paradigms of knowledge, exemplified by the map’s edges and how a map is read, made and remade together.

The exhibition coincides with the release of The Word for World, a book co-published by Spiral House (a new imprint of Silver Press) and AA Publications. The book brings Le Guin’s maps together with poems, stories, interviews, recipes and essays by contributors from a variety of perspectives to enquire into the relationship between worlds and how they are represented and imagined.

The book is available to pre-order from the AA Bookshop.

The Word for World book is edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin with contributions from Federico Campagna, Theo Downes-Le Guin, Daniel Heath Justice, Bhanu Kapil, Canisia Lubrin, Una McCormack, David Naimon, Nisha Ramayya, Shoshone Collective, Standard Deviation, Marilyn Strathern.

The Word for World exhibition is curated by Sarah Shin and designed by Standard Deviation, with thanks to Theo Downes-Le Guin and the Ursula K Le Guin Foundation.

The exhibition is generously supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

PROGRAMME

The Word for World book launch AA Lecture Hall, 36 Bedford SquareFriday 10 October 2025, 4-6pm

The Word for World exhibition openingAA Gallery, 36 Bedford SquareFriday 10 October 2025, from 6pm

Dream Maps: A Birthday Party for Ursula K Le GuinAA Lecture Hall, 36 Bedford Square Tuesday 21 October 2025, 6.30-8.30pm

Ursula K Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author of twenty-one novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve children’s books, six volumes of poetry and four of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebulas, nine Hugos and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/ Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

Sarah Shin explores dreams, myth, cosmic speculation and transformation through writing, research, publishing, curation and creation. Her current collaborations include: with Irene Revell, the Bodies of Sound book and curatorial project; with Sammy Lee, Mirror, a video game that journeys through a mythical world of correspondences; and Concrete Poetry with Mark Lowe. She is a founder of Silver Press, the feminist publisher, and Spiral House, a new imprint for art, poetry and ways of knowing; Ignota, the creative publishing and curatorial house that closed in 2024; New Suns literary festival at the Barbican Centre; and Standard Deviation. 

So Mayer is a writer, editor, bookseller and organiser. With Sarah Shin, they co-edited Ursula K Le Guin, Space Crone (Silver Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Locus Award for Non-Fiction. They are the author of two works of creative non-fiction, Bad Language (Peninsula, 2025) and A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula, 2020); a Republic of Consciousness-longlisted collection of speculative (non)-fiction, Truth & Dare (Cipher, 2023); and poetry projects including The God Files: Yentling (2024) with Sarah Crewe, raising funds for #Valentines4Palestine. They are the editor of catflap #5 for Outburst Arts, and of Culture Club, the webzine of queer feminist film curation collective Club Des Femmes.

Standard Deviation is a multidisciplinary collective weaving geometric, psychic and inhabited spaces. Led by Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe and Sarah Shin, with Federico Campagna, MJ Harding and Rain Wu, they explore nested realities and altered states through elliptical modes, including intuition, quantum, dreams, myth and higher dimensions.

Acknowledgements:Curators: Sarah Shin and Harriet Jennings

Consulting Curator: Theo Downes-Le Guin

Assistant Curator: Molly Evans

Exhibition Design: Standard Deviation (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe and Sarah Shin, with Federico Campagna, MJ Harding and Rain Wu)

Graphic Design: Caspar Bailey

Copyediting: Anna Lisa Reynolds and Max ZarzyckiCyanotype

Production: Elena Andreea Teleaga

Sign Writing: Louis Musk

Exhibition Installation: Install Archive and AA Facilities

Audio Visual: AA Audio-Visual Department

Soundscape: MJ Harding, with Federico Campagna, MJ Harding, Penelope Klein, Clara Moeschlin and Sarah Shin reciting poems from So Far So Good by Ursula K Le Guin, published by Spiral House

Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these by emailing publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk.

The Word for World

Date:

Friday 10 October 2025 to Saturday 6 December 2025

Time:

11:00 - 19:00

Location:

AA Gallery, 36 Bedford Square, WC1B 3ES