A flotsam of noise rises up from a Mumbai street into the heritage Art Deco apartment that has been Areez Katki’s studio base since 2018. During our phone interview, the connection occasionally drops out as the India-born citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand discusses his practice and the topics of fragmented identity, displacement, spirituality and sexuality that influence his work. The background setting in his Parsi community may be chaotic, but Katki brings clarity into the foreground with an intellectual study of the threads on which he pulls to arrange his work. Those threads may be long, complex and non-linear, but they’re arranged in the eloquent crystallisation of his thoughts and with a tender beauty in his art.
Katki works with tapestry, weaving, embroidery, painting, printing and, most recently, clay, as…
