OMP 79: The World's World

"Over the course of last year Afrika, Europe and Russia melted together to become one continent. Apart from that, Latin-Amerika and Germany have become equally in size, after centrury’s of evolution."
- Maarten Bel


If maps have the power to structure the way we look at the world than the collection in The World’s World shows that people always adjust dominant worldviews to fit their needs.

‘Would you draw me a map of the world?’ On airports, via Internet and in the bus artist Maarten Bel assembled maps by people from all over the world. Often the distance from one country to the next is wrong and continents are shown as islands: if you’d compare the maps to the atlas of the world, you’d see a misguided worldview. But, The World’s World isn’t so much a collection of erroneous maps as it is a collection of testimonies of individual life paths.


Text: Bram Esser
Graphic Design: Mark van den Heuvel
Editor: Ellen Zoete
proofreading: Karianne Rygh
Project assistance: Fenna Schaap

Printer: Lecturis
Edition: 250