They appear in newspapers, on paper bags, on the walls – sometimes clean and mostly littered with paan and gutka stains, on railway stations and bus terminals, on market streets, bus stops. They're almost everywhere in public spaces, yet they remain unseen or habitually ignored most of the time.

These are lists of missing people, either with a passport-sized photo distorted by halftone printing or with a textual description that follows a specific order of writing.

The families of the disappeared put up these ads, almost like a ritual in a prayer, with the hope of finding the missing. The missing people largely remain missing: both in terms of physical presence and also from our collective conscience, from the very memory of everyday.

Curated by Ina Puri, artist Ranjan Kaul’s ongoing exhibition ‘Within, Without: Tales of Evanescence’ at Urban Fringe underground gallery attempts to remember these ‘missing people’ through paintings, sculptures, wood cut prints and mixed media installations and to disrupt the very system of memory that is designed to forget the disappeared.

“Through my research, everyday observations and practice I found out that most of the ‘missing people’ whose names appear on the ads and lists belong to the very marginalised sections of society everywhere in the world across borders. In which the largest part of these people who have disappeared are young girls and teenagers; mostly picked up for sex trafficking.  However, as a society we fail to remember them. Let alone resisting these disappearances. The ‘missing people’ turn into mere numbers, a figure in the statistics- stripped off all their stories of being, belonging and struggles of within and without,” Kaul says.

Each artwork tells the multilayered stories of people who’ve gone missing and forced into oblivion, almost silently, by the same systems of oppression that targets and affects the marginalised all over the world.

His artwork interrogates and illustrates the scars and pain these disappearances leave behind.

It emphasises remembrance as an act of resilience – especially at a time when the world is haunted by regimes of erasure – of bodies, of land, of memory.

One of his paintings titled 'Leaving Home' depicts a mother and daughter fleeing domestic violence.

In 'Cataclysm in Sudan', the artist "unfurls stories of survival in the face of abject desperation against the backdrop of the ongoing civil war between the poverty-stricken country's two military factions, where women are compelled to trade their bodies for a jerrycan of water."

"The work also details the long, fateful journey of the "Lost Boys" during the Second Sudanese Civil War in the late 1980s."

 The exhibition tells stories of women abducted for sex trafficking, lovers separated by caste and social divide, cyber crime and how it targets marginalised bodies, trauma and the mental health crises, and the disappearance of migrant workers while crossing international borders.

The allegorical, symbolic and figurative compositions with vivid colour palettes in contrast to monochromatic paper cutting collages draw immediate attention to the artwork, evoking a sense of legitimate discomfort and realisation. These works not only narrate stories but seek answers too.

The exhibition is on view at Urban Fringe, Okhla Phase 1, New Delhi till October 5, from 11 am to 7 pm.

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