Indira Freitas Johnson spent more than a year asking herself a set of questions she believes everyone eventually faces: How do we remember those we've lost? What remains after we're gone? How do objects and rituals keep memories alive?

The answers fill the galleries at the Evanston Art Center starting Sunday, July 12, when "Presence and Absence: The Space Between" opens with a reception from 1 to 4 p.m. at 1717 Central St. Johnson, a sculptor, peace activist, and educator who keeps a studio in Evanston, curated the show, which brings together 46 artists working in sculpture, painting, performance, and participatory installations.

The exhibition examines what Johnson and the Art Center's materials describe as "the dual reality of death" — the physical disappearance of people we love alongside the emotional and spiritual traces they leave behind. Rather than treating death as an ending, the show frames it as a thread connecting past, present, and future.

Materials range from the fragile to the permanent. In an Instagram post, Johnson described the artists' choices as spanning cicada wings, ash, and onions to metal, ceramic, and textiles, "revealing the delicate balance between impermanence and our longing for continuity."

Among the participating artists are Selva Aparicio, Trudy Borenstein-Sugiura, Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, Alfonso Piloto Nieves Ruiz, Nirmal Raja, Deborah Newmark, Savneet Talwar, and Audrey Yang.

One piece extends beyond the gallery walls. "Remember Me" is a community artwork painted on the asphalt in the Art Center's parking lot. Visitors are invited to leave a footprint and share how they would like to be remembered. In the same Instagram post, Johnson called watching the collective memorial grow "one of the most meaningful parts of the project."

Johnson, born in Mumbai, received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1967. Her work is held in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. She received the Illinois Governor's Award for the Arts and was named Chicago Magazine's Chicagoan of the Year in 2013 for "Ten Thousand Ripples," a public art initiative that installed 100 emerging Buddha sculptures across the Chicago area. In 1993, she founded the Shanti Foundation for Peace, which uses art to teach nonviolence in Chicago and Evanston-area schools.

The show runs through Sunday, August 2. The Evanston Art Center's galleries are free and open to the public, with weekend hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.