The newest addition to Katki’s visual language is a three-dimensional vernacular that may seem a drastic departure from his formally painted or embroidered two-dimensional works, often dealing with soft materialities and installation modes. However, when one views these works from afar, it becomes evident how and why the artist has ventured into the area of earth-based forms. Kaolinite clay, as a material sourced and processed from the earth’s crust, is one of the most charged cultural markers of geographic locationality; thus, land, which is directly connected to, is till today one of the most disputed earthly resources. Katki’s fascination with archaeology and materials from the quotidian, often found and restored, has seen him venture into this arena of excavation and restoration. Archaeology, however, is a practice that has been put under scrutiny by the artist in various past iterations of the artist's work.

The title of Lot.1 refers to an inscription left by Mohammed Qasim beside a medieval Persian manuscript painting by him, dated 1627. The painting depicts a homosensual seduction between Shah Abbas I and his page boy, surrounded by wine, vessels and perfume on a rug tucked amidst a garden. The work, like the other three from the ‘Lot’ series, is composed of references to architecture, abstract sherds of vegetation, miniature ceramic vessels, numerical tokens and human figurines. The two human-like figures featured here are a broken torso of a man with one intact arm offering its palm forward; and another votive figure which makes a more direct reference to Neolithic pagan matriarchal practices, in the form of a Venus (particularly resembling the Venus of Tappeh Sarab, which has featured previously in Katki’s work). The nature of the full inscription from Qasim’s work is particularly tender and sensuous: “May life provide all that you desire from three lips: those of your lover, the river, and the cup.” Katki’s choice to reframe it in a fragmented manner appealed to (his) sensibilities, whereby a meandering journey toward realizing these joys felt more poignant than actually depicting them whole.