Missing, launched at the India Art Fair in 2014, aims at ensuring this conversation takes place.
"There are 3 million prostituted women in India, with 1.2 million of them being young girls. The average age of recruitment of girls into prostitution is between 9 and 12 years." —Missing
“The first step to stop trafficking is Prevention,” says Kolkata-based acclaimed photographer and installation artist, Leena Kejriwal. To do so, she has established Missing, a public art project that aims to create awareness about missing girls who are lost to sex trafficking.
In her journey as a photographer spanning over a decade and a half, Kejriwal has dedicated over 12 years towards the cause of anti-sex trafficking. “I want to wham into people’s heads that the commodification of a human body is not ethical,” she says, adding, “Even clicking on a porn site leads to an increase in that demand for commodification.”
Kejriwal also notes that the demand in urban centres is ever-increasing and that it leads to the disappearance of girls from villages. This is due to a lack of awareness. Girls from the villages get lured as they are promised a better life. “People are squeamish to talk about this issue. No one wants to hear more than two lines about it,” she shares.
Missing, launched at the India Art Fair in 2014, aims at ensuring this conversation takes place. It is a series of larger-than-life silhouettes of young girls placed against the skyline. These are constructed from iron sheets that are painted pitch-black so that they appear like black holes in the sky, holes into which millions of girls disappear. This is in line with Missing’s philosophy of creating awareness in an interactive, non-preachy and eye-catching manner.
Since the inception of this movement, over a 100 of these silhouettes have been placed in Kolkata. These installations have also been used by organisations in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai among others. “These silhouettes are a way for people to feel connected to the cause,” says Kejriwal. She is also the author of the book, Calcutta: Repossessing the City.
Kejriwal believes that it is high time all of us start caring and that the problem can no longer be ignored. “Even as a passive smoker, your health is getting injured. Similarly, passive viewing of trafficking is injuring your health. It is injuring the health of the society in the long run,” concludes the artist.
Find out more here.
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