Origin of Desire by Mari Ito

Origin of Desire marks Japanese artist Mari Ito’s first solo exhibition in India, presented by GEEK/ART New Delhi at The Ballroom, Bikaner House from 24 April to 1 May 2026. Currently based in Barcelona, Ito brings together a striking body of sculptural works alongside large and small-format paintings that explore a vivid, biomorphic world shaped by desire, memory, and transformation.

Rooted in traditional Nihonga techniques, Ito’s practice involves layering natural pigments, sumi ink, and nikawa on washi paper, merging the precision of Japanese craftsmanship with the luminosity and dimensionality influenced by the Mediterranean. Her works feature surreal botanica—flowers with human-like faces, swelling organic forms, and cellular patterns—that blur the boundaries between the human, vegetal, and microscopic.

At the core of the exhibition is an exploration of desire as a generative, multi-directional force. Ito’s compositions challenge normative structures of the body and identity, presenting fluid, proliferating forms that resist containment. Drawing from Japanese surrealism, folkloric animism, and post-war avant-garde sensibilities, her work reclaims the decorative and the floral as sites of political and emotional charge.

Through Origin of Desire, Ito constructs immersive visual landscapes where the biological and the fantastical converge, inviting viewers to consider the body as a site of transformation, resistance, and expansive possibility.

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