The Search for Utopia: We fixed everything in the real world so all women are happy and powerful
Bringing my Book-to-Doll translation project into Singapore through Judith Huang's Sofia and the Utopia Machine and imagining perfection through Batik
Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been drawn to Barbie. This was the case even if she isn’t the kind of toy anyone would usually get for a boy. Perfect looks aside, I was fascinated by how she could be used to imagine what it is like to create a perfect world where everyone could live out their fantasies. Sure it’s utopian but hey, why shouldn’t one dream? Wanting to incorporate Barbie and her philosophy into my works, I’ve written quite a few short stories while imagining fashion doll tie-ins but the perfect idea came to me some time last year.
It all started on the 4th of April 2023, when the character posters for Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” were first revealed. It featured portraits of the cast against a glittery cut-out of a star, finished with a caption detailing their various achievements as Barbie. I thought it was beautiful how inclusive these ads were for it sang the message of how everyone could be Barbie. This of course went viral, especially in the book community and I got hooked.
From Austen to Bridgerton and even the works of she who shall not be named, the iconic layout had been adapted to promote everyone’s favourite literary heroes. Publishers had even used this format to promote their books. That’s when I thought I could go one step further. I would take my favourite characters from the books I love, free them from their papery prison, and transform them into dolls!
As with everything that I do, the idea of representing my own culture through my work was important to me so I started toying around with the idea of translating Judith Huang’s Sofia and the Utopia Machine into a doll. Aside from being one of my favourite books from my home country Singapore, it is also the novel that I chose to work on for my dissertation topic where I compared it to Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One for their shared interest in games and the creation of a perfect world.
Sofia and the Utopia Machine spoke to me because of the way it brought folklore and science together. Set in a futuristic Singapore which had been stratified into the Canopies, the Midlevels, and the Voids, the novel revolves around the discovery of the Utopia Machine, a government-funded project that will lead to a paradisiacal alternate universe referred to as ‘Shangri-La’, ‘Eden’ and the ‘end of all sorrows’. Heavily multi-disciplinary, the project employs a branch of science premised upon the interconnectedness of ‘science, and art, and religion and everything else’ referred to as ‘Biophysics’.
While brainstorming over how I can make my translation of the novel into a doll more interesting, I chanced upon aNERDgallery, the first Singapore-based art platform specialising in textile arts. This discovery was serendipitous for not only was everything within the gallery so breathtakingly beautiful, it almost felt like it was a recreation of some of the novel’s most fantastical scenes where traditional Malay art comes to life!
This is because when Sofia activates the Utopia Machine, she transforms into a creation goddess of this parallel universe where she forms galaxies and sculpts mankind out of red clay. For the occupants of this world Sofia had created, she can ‘grant them their prayers’ and ‘grant them visions’. Wanting to pay homage to Judith’s incorporation of Malay folklore into her novel, I wanted to use batik in my recreation of her outfit and showcase its cultural significance.
Now the outfit to depict Sofia in had always been obvious to me. As she spends most of the novel in her school uniform, I thought it would be apt to feature her in well, some of Singapore’s most iconic school uniform. According to an article on the Top 5 Most Popular School Uniforms in Singapore, the pinafore look is by far the most well-liked by both genders. With thread and needle in hand, I quickly went stitching and the end result looked like this:
So yes Barbie ended up being Snow White due to the shortage of Asian dolls in London’s pre-loved doll market as all of the dolls were donated to me by The Toy Project, a London-based charity slash second-hand book and toy shop with play therapists, Lego workshops and initiatives aimed at helping under-privileged children from all around the world. I also featured her in her “post-PE attire” with a tee shirt instead as I dared not make a shirt without a sewing machine. Thankfully, I’ve managed to find one from a later trip to The Toy Project so she’s all good for school now.
Anything else you noticed in the picture? All the tabs in the book perhaps? They’re my annotations for my dissertation and I might have went a little overboard there… I will probably post about them some day when I can break it down into digestible bits but in the meanwhile, Sofia and last week’s Melantho will be featured at aNERDgallery in a special showcase titled The Search for Dolls. We’ve framed it like a treasure hunt so do pop by to look out for them. You might even get more than what you ask for!