Set and Reset

A modular alphabet is a bet: that a small set of shapes, recombined, can carry a whole language. Zellige tile cutters in Fez made that bet, so did Oaxacan block printers, so did the Dessau workshops, and each arrived somewhere different.

The exhibition lays three historic systems flat and then hands their parts to four contemporary studios. Visitors can set a line themselves at a working table of cast blocks, print it, and take it away.

A wall of printed attempts, kept in the order they were made, records what happens when a system meets a language it was never cut for.