This series of nine diptych works on paper are based on a reframing of archaeological material from the vantage point of the Parsi queer diaspora. The process began with an exploration of archives—beginning from a broad range—that contained artifacts from Achaemenid Persia, particularly those which were excavated by European archaeological teams from the 19th and early-20th centuries. Most of these objects were taken to Europe and several are still at the Musée du Louvre in Paris; some are from the Oxus Treasure, which is a large finding of gold and precious metal-based Achaemenid findings, which are still at the British Museum; and a select few artifacts and architectural motifs cited in this series are from the National Museum of Iran (Tehran) and the present-day ruins of Persepolis (located in the Fars province of present-day Iran), which was destroyed by Alexander of Macedon in 330 BC.

Over the past seven years Katki has closely studied what remains of Achaemenid art: alongside these studies he has practiced the queer art of fabulation, through cues provided in elements of tangible narrative that are traceable in Zoroastrian decorative motifs, domestic and ceremonial artifacts, and the structural plans of Persepolis which has been repeatedly visited by him since his first field trip there in 2018.

As a diptych this work cites queer ecologies and the ephemerality of natural phenomena through a sensorial abstraction of motifs that were clearly influenced by schematic vegetal motifs from the Persepolitan ruins. Here, however, the artist posits questions around decay and destruction of the Achaemenians and their citadel, Persepolis by depicting two Persian courtiers melting into a reversed embrace—leaning their backs against one another. The figures on the larger lower panel of the diptych were based on figures plucked from a procession bas relief from the Apadana Palace hall staircase, there’s a verdant re-chromatisation of their forms, or perhaps reimagining of them rendered in layers of watercolor—the artist fantasizes about the lives the figures in this court might’ve had: an implicit homosensuality emerges as their bodies are subsumed by nature. The narrow top panel once again suggests a procession or staircase format: abstracted forms linger above a vegetal pattern based on a Persepolitan bas relief of stylised palm fronds—here, bleeding into a vibrantly imagined ground, almost dissolving into an alternative, more vividly hued, material history. (Note: when Zoroastrians were persecuted after the 8th Century, that shade of muddy yellow/mustard was the color of their mandated garb.)