Ursula K. Le Guin & 5D (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, Sarah Shin), Festival, 2026, single-channel video, color, sound, cyanotypes, drawings, mixed media. dimensions variable, 6 min 50 sec, Cyanotypes: Elena Andreea Teleaga. Original exhibition partner: Architectural Association, London. Curated by Sarah Shin, Harriet Jennings, Molly Evans and Theo Downes-Le Guin Commissioned by Busan Biennale Organizing Committee, 2026. Courtesy of Architectural Association; and The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation.
Ursula K. Le Guin & 5D (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, Sarah Shin), Festival, 2026, single-channel video, color, sound, cyanotypes, drawings, mixed media. dimensions variable, 6 min 50 sec, Cyanotypes: Elena Andreea Teleaga. Original exhibition partner: Architectural Association, London. Curated by Sarah Shin, Harriet Jennings, Molly Evans and Theo Downes-Le Guin Commissioned by Busan Biennale Organizing Committee, 2026. Courtesy of Architectural Association; and The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation.
Ursula K. Le Guin & 5D (Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, Sarah Shin), Festival, 2026, single-channel video, color, sound, cyanotypes, drawings, mixed media. dimensions variable, 6 min 50 sec, Cyanotypes: Elena Andreea Teleaga. Original exhibition partner: Architectural Association, London. Curated by Sarah Shin, Harriet Jennings, Molly Evans and Theo Downes-Le Guin Commissioned by Busan Biennale Organizing Committee, 2026. Courtesy of Architectural Association; and The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation.
& 5D
Ursula K. Le Guin & 5D
When Ursula K. Le Guin began writing a new story, she drew a map first. For her, a map was not simply an illustration of an imagined world, but a method of imagining that world into being.
Festival brings together a selection of Le Guin’s maps and drawings. Conceived by the collective 5D—Sammy Lee, Mark Lowe, and Sarah Shin—the installation presents these works not as illustrations, but as ritual scenography. For the Busan Biennale, 5D extends Le Guin’s practice of mapmaking into a shared process of world-making, where multiple voices come together to create a single myth.
At the center of the installation is a void, translating Le Guin’s idea of a "dancing place". Around it stand two towers, echoing the hemispheres of Anarres, the fictional world from her novel. One bears deep-blue cyanotype maps, while the other presents a video work by 5D that draws on Le Guin's fictional world.
Passing through the threshold and the "House of Time", visitors arrive at the anbang, the innermost room of a traditional Korean house. Here, Le Guin's original drawings and watercolours are displayed, creating a space that is both a reading room and a place of quiet contemplation. Through ritual, myth, cyanotype, textiles, sound, and dance, Festival invites visitors to experience stories that reach beyond the limits of language.