India, Jan. 12 -- Deonar, Mumbai's vast dumping ground in the eastern suburbs, usually enters public consciousness as data: tonnage figures, court deadlines, drone shots of smouldering hills. It is seen from above, discussed from a distance, and forgotten just as quickly. At Priyasri Art Gallery's Necropolis of Remains, presented during Mumbai Gallery Weekend, those same mountains of waste are stripped of abstraction. They are rendered intimate, human and disturbingly alive, asking viewers not what Deonar is, but what the city chooses not to see.

Taking its cue from Mountain Tales, journalist Saumya Roy's deeply reported account of life in and around the Deonar landfill, one of Asia's largest dumping grounds and one of Mumbai's most wilf...