UTOPIA Sticker, Léann Herlihy

UTOPIA (2024) is a car bumper sticker which takes stylistic reference from the original black and white oval country code stickers which were designed in the 1940s by the United Nations to distinguish international traffic in Europe. The term ‘utopia’ emerged in 1516 in Thomas More’s book under the same title. In an attempt to imagine a complex, self-contained community, in which people share a common culture and way of life, More coined ‘utopia’ from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere', creating a pun on the almost identical Greek word eu-topos meaning 'good place'. And what is a pun but an exploitation of different possible meanings? Thus, to provide an account of the many ways in which utopia (re)emerges, this bumper sticker acts as an indicator towards the horizons cruised and chased, those that seem attainable yet never tangible. In persevering towards the unknown, we ultimately accept the way in which one is lost in order to be also found and not found.