Communication is a key element of all human existence. Across centuries, we have devised countless systems to decipher, categorise, navigate, and make sense of the world. Often, our readings serve us well, but sometimes misreading leads us astray. Language and symbols are familiar vessels of meaning, yet we have also built global signalling systems such as the International Code of Signals, standardised in the early twentieth century. Overseen by the International Maritime Organization, this universal lexicon of urgency and intent defines numerous signals, designed to ensure clarity especially in moments of crisis.

The code EL, or ECHO LIMA, is drawn from this system. It signals a request, an imperative: Repeat the distress position. Here, the signal’s meaning is written in Morse code, formed by the alignment of 95 etched copper plates along the gallery walls. Each plate is a fragment of an image never fully revealed, a concealed layer of information. The composition draws from ancient Greek pottery depicting three goddesses, each a different embodiment of Nike, the winged goddess of victory. The myth tells us Nike crowns the triumphant, whether in battle or play, and presides over rites of sacrifice.

The fragmented visual language embedded in the plates on the walls finds resonance in a three-dimensional form rising from the gallery floor, another cryptic system seemingly in dialogue with the signals above. Is this a battlefield, a forgotten chess game, a ritual site abandoned, awaiting new players, if anyone still recalls the rules? Or perhaps the goddesses alone know how the game unfolds.

Here, the delicately crafted drawings, unfolding across the copper plates, collide with the traditionally masculine domain of strategy and conflict. Between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements, a tension emerges, a residue of transmission where systems collapse into one another. In this space, we recognise our fundamental desire to decode, to assemble, to bring meaning into form. Yet this is a game without clear rules, without an obvious victor. What remains is a profound longing to complete the puzzle.