The 10th Gasworks residency for an artist from Aotearoa New Zealand has been awarded to Areez Katki. Selected by the Director and Curator of Gasworks, following an open call, Areez will undertake the London-based residency from 30 September - 15 December 2026.
About Areez Katki
Areez's practice is situated around material and language-based possibilities. For the past decade this position has allowed them to commune with ancestral knowledge systems, inherited and embodied. Their interdisciplinary practice surveys queer spatiality and memory, which build upon biomythography and fabulation as key modes of storytelling. Areez’s experimental language, sound and installation-based investigations converge around a lifelong practice of hand-embroidering drawings on found cloth.
During their residency at Gasworks, Areez will continue the research and development for a new performance and moving-image work, An Internal Dissenter Who Remains in Relation. While holding tension between inheritance and refusal in daily gestures, this work explores how a body holds space for the sacred and profane within the same frames of experience. Resisting static forms of authority, Areez activates their position as a Zoroastrian priest to cultivate rituals that mobilise the queer body and propose fluid, relational and protective modes of knowledge transmission — to synthesise these tensions into generative parables that arrive from inherited and embodied sources.
Areez (he/they) (b. 1989, Mumbai) currently lives and works between Berlin, Auckland and Mumbai. They hold an MA (distinction) in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, and a BA from Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau The University of Auckland. Their work is held in numerous private and public collections, and has been exhibited in Oceania, Asia, North America and Europe at institutions such as: Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (Ngāmotu New Plymouth, Aotearoa NZ); Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (Mumbai, IN); 7th edition of Colomboscope, ‘Language is Migrant’ (Colombo, SL); Latitude 53 (Edmonton, CA); Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol (Innsbruck, AT);Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin, DE). Areez was selected as the CNZ Toi AotearoaArtist in Residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin DE (2024 – 2025). Areez has been awarded the Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, Stuttgart DE (2027 –2028).
Areez is represented in Aotearoa New Zealand by Tim Melville Gallery.
About Gasworks
Gasworks is a leading non-profit arts organisation based in south London. Working at the intersection of UK and international contemporary art, Gasworks have supported more than 600 artists from over 80 countries since their founding in 1994.
Gasworks commission and produce exhibitions by emerging and underrepresented artists, and host residencies that enable artists from all over the world to research and develop new work. They also provide subsidised studios for London-based artists and co-design participation projects for local children, young people and families together with community partners.
Above all, Gasworks is a home for artists. They are committed to building long-term relationships with all the artists they work with. Thanks to their award-winning history, they have developed an unparalleled reputation for cultivating new artistic talent.
Gasworks is a registered charity, the London hub of Triangle Network, and part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio.
Partners and Supporters
The Gasworks residency is delivered through a partnership between Gasworks, the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust and the Office for Contemporary Art Aotearoa, and is made possible by the incredibly generous support of many individuals and trusts, including the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust, Jenny and Andrew Smith, Shirley-Ann and Rick Mannering, Dame Jenny Gibbs, Bath Street Arts Trust, Rosemary and Tim Auld, the Gow Family Foundation, the British Council Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific, Anne Tattersfield, Tim Melville Gallery, Lett Thomas, Coastal Signs, Gow Langsford Gallery, Brown Bread, Samantha Male and Piupiu Maya Turei.