In March 2018 Areez Katki set off from his East Auckland home for Mumbai on a carefully conceived quest to trace his creative inheritance as the son of a Parsi Indian family with ancient Persian roots. Katki’s ruminations on what it means to be Parsi are inclusive of small acts of kindness and the razed ramparts of civilisations.

Marabar Caves was an exhibition that took its title from the caves featured in E.M. Forster’s 1924 novel 'Passage to India.' This is the first exhibition in a series of three entitled ‘Resources of the Social Imagination’ by Victoria Wynne-Jones, which will look at the relationships between narrative pleasure and contemporary art. Narratives that are cosmological, geological and mythical combine to describe a space that is highly sculptural, one that becomes psychosexual with the aid of a colonial gaze.

Areez Katki described his 5-metre-drop of hand-embroidered silk hanging in the Ball Room of Vanished Delft, as a synaesthesic response to the score of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, a ballet based on the ancient Greek Longus’ novel of the same name. It was performed by the Ballet Russes in Paris in 1912, with sets designed by Leon Bakst. Katki discovered the music when he was traveling in the Basque Country of Spain, the region where Ravel was born.

Cotton, Silk & Linen fibres / Mounting on pinewood dowels.

Sources: Turkey, Lebanon & India.

Treatments: Indigo, Madder, Tea (Ceylon) and Wine (NZ Merlot)

Hand knitted using intarsia colour-blocking and fair isle techniques.

A series of hand-embroidered scarves on narrow hand-loomed silk noil. Annual edition of six scarves from the Vienna Series have been crafted by Areez each year since 2014, each numbered and dated.

Limited series of decorative domestic objects: Hand-embroidered upholstered cushions and bolsters.

Outer: French cotton thread on a selection of hand-woven cotton, linen and silk textiles that were sourced from India, Turkey and France.

Inner: Bamboo fibre and cotton wadding.

At a recent talk for Objectspace’s National Symposium on Craft, Applied Arts and Design at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, Areez Katki described himself as a practitioner of the applied arts with a specific interest in textiles and apparel. He made a distinction between the craftsperson couturier and the contemporary fashion designer, who encourages consumption.

Crafted as an ongoing collaborative series using carefully sourced textiles that are treated and overdyed by Kirsty Cameron of Godmother. Each bask hat panel has been individually hand-embroidered by Katki using a close set of of needlework drawing techniques. Bonded, lined & constructed in collaboration with Godmother.

A collaborative story exploring Shirt-making & Hand-embroidery.

As a practice in mindful observation of the spaces around him, Areez participates in a daily ritual that involves a documentation of rudimentary forms and linear movements. These studies attempted to record synaesthesic experiences that a body might have when it transits between natural and urban spaces. All studies for this Shirt Series were initially made on cotton paper using aquatint pigment & ink - using a refined palette of 5 colours that were predetermined through collaboration with Sherie Muijs.

Watercolour pigment & ink on cold press cotton paper. Form studies for textile artwork.

The colour planes of these handmade textile panels explore synaesthesia based on experiences recollected from the Katki’s time in Istanbul. Thrace and Anatolia are two continental land masses on either side of the Bospherous River, separating Asia from Europe. Living and working in Istanbul resulted in daily ferry trips between two continents and experiencing vivid juxtapositions of coexisting cultures.

A series of linear architectural studies on repurposed Spanish upholstery textiles.