Photographer Sarai Mari celebrated the release of her 3rd book, Delusion, this past Thursday at New York’s OnCanal gallery, operated by Wallplay. Located at 312 Canal in an open-air bay typically used as a storefront on the busy streets of Chinatown, the pop-up space is intimate and unassuming. On the night of the opening, the gallery teemed with a palpable energy as rain came down in sheets just outside the vinyl flap entryway. The thick, sweltering air and close intermingling of bodies could not have been a more apt ambiance for Mari’s dark, sexually charged works. 

Sarai Mari is a Japanese fashion photographer and artist with a background in photojournalism. In her personal work, she often deals with subjects of feminine sexuality and erotica. Her first two books, Naked and Speak Easy, subvert traditional notions of gender and sexuality with raw, honest imagery. 

In her most recent series, Delusion, Mari explores themes of phobia, paranoia, and fantasy. The photographer muses, “I suffer from the obsession of being attacked by someone…it’s not so much the fear of being attacked from the outside, but from my own delusion that lives inside me.” Through her photographs, here printed in large-scale on vinyl banners, Mari addresses this feeling that her delusions and fears are inextricable from her existence. Women are sprawled, mostly nude, on beds with white sheets. A reoccurring octopus appears in a number of the frames, perhaps reminiscent of Hokusai’s 1814 woodblock print The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.  

“I suffer from the obsession of being attacked by someone…it’s not so much the fear of being attacked from the outside, but from my own delusion that lives inside me.”

For Mari, composing a photograph is a method of understanding what it means to exist in this world, both physically and psychically. In creating explorative imagery, the artist is able to find beauty amidst her pain and confusion. “At this moment I am alive, but I die every moment, my family and friends also die, my world is on the time axis of this moment only…I don’t exist before or after this moment.” There is a solace then, in photography, for its unique ability to capture a moment within a single frame. 

Delusion is on view at 312 Canal St. in New York through Thursday, July 18.