TARQ

Bildungsroman (& Other Stories) | Areez Katki | Viewing Room

The team at TARQ is delighted to present Areez Katki's first solo show in India, ‘Bildungsroman (& Other Stories)’. The title borrows an all-encompassing term from German, for a person's spiritual and psychological journey. In the works created from his time in Mumbai in 2018 till 2021, Katki uses embroidery and archival objects sourced from his family home to explore themes of spirituality, migrant identity and sexuality using domestic cloth as its grounding framework.

He interrogates patriarchal hegemonies using a visual language grounded in domesticity, illustrated with techniques and materials that were once relegated to the “feminine domain.” Using handwoven cotton dust cloths, khadi, glass beads, and repurposed textiles, the artist weaves together his multiple identities as a member of the traditional Parsi community—a child of Zoroastrian immigrants—and a queer New Zealander, reclaiming his heritage by reframing it to fit his identity. Katki's embrace of traditional embroidery techniques, taught to him by his mother and grandmother, is a tribute to the most cherished aspects of his childhood.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition includes letters exchanged between Katki and curator Zeenat Nagree over the past 18 months; they examine the more quotidian nature of the works in the show, particularly looking into what constitutes a home during the pandemic. Writing about sensations and memories of home to Nagree, Katki recalls the sound of coconut husks transporting him back to where his story began. “I was transported to Tardeo, where I was born and spent the first year of my life... A fascination with my ancestral home has led me to think of this site as corporeal; this transmuting vehicle. Functioning some days as an ancient galleon, ferrying familial ephemera to these South Pacific Shores I dwell, with little sense of belonging after even twenty something years of occupation. And occasionally my home transfigures into this mythic sea creature – its tentacles extending wide, with some prehensile occupation to spread open some deep, stiffened creases; to make soft entrances inside long- unoccupied chambers; to reactivate ancient embers and conjure all these sensations: of comfort, of growth and then of loss, of longing.”

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