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.

This diptych reframes and transgresses some of the more overtly patriarchal practices depicted in the bas reliefs flanking the staircase of the Apadana Palace’s audience hall at Persepolis. Hence, in the frieze, one now sees a female figure leading three younger male figures behind a dromedary camel. The larger top leaf of this diptych offers flattened, chromatised renderings of vessels and vegetation from rare (almost completely destroyed) artifacts from the domestic Persepolitan ruins: an amphora on the left and a small gilded bowl on the right. The polychromatic depictions of these scenes and still lives might posit how a queer migrant from a dwindling diaspora grasps at methods of reimagined poetry that queers and subverts the quotidian into moments of sublime reclamation—aiding the purposes of traversing, defining and constantly engaging with questions of identity.