The AA’s Forthcoming Exhibition, 'The Word for World', Appears in the Financial Times

The FT’s recent article ‘Welcome to Mordor – the rise of fictional maps’ mentions the AA’s upcoming exhibition The Word for World: the Maps of Ursula K Le Guin. In the article, Sarah Shin – director and co-founder of the feminist publisher Silver Press who co-curated the exhibition and co-published a book of the same name with AA Publications – discusses Le Guin's fictional maps in the context of the exhibition. The article can be read here.

The Word for World, which opens in the AA Gallery on 10 October, presents a selection of Le Guin’s maps and drawings, 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. Read more about the exhibition here.

Image: Talismanic map of the Valley, with place names, 1985, at The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K Le Guin, 10 October to 6 December © Courtesy Ursula K Le Guin Foundation