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Just over 1,800 unstamped packets  the number a heavy heroin user might go through in a year, the show notes  will be arranged in rows on a wall in an effort to make the idea of addiction seem less abstract. Bags typically sell for about $10, Ms. Vadnai said, and may contain anywhere from 30 milligrams of heroin up to a tenth of a gram. Cards bearing facts about the health hazards of injection drug use will also be distributed at the show.

In addition, Ms. Vadnai, Mr. Mateu-Gelabert and their collaborators decided to give some of the show’s proceeds to the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center, a counseling and needle-exchange organization near the gallery. The collective members said such an organization has more of an impact than groups that simply seek to get drug users to quit.

Heroin users donated some of the packets in the exhibition. Social Art Collective members found others near drug distribution spots and areas where addicts congregate. The artists found packets in the rugged streets of Bushwick and in Mott Haven in the Bronx, and in the gentrifying streets of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. They picked up packets near the stately brownstones that surround Gramercy Park, and inside Tompkins Square Park, where the trade flourished in the 1980s and into the 90s and still exists.

The stamps that identify the heroin inside draw on a wide range of references. There are names like White Fang, Time Bomb and Monster Power, which is decorated with an image of the grim reaper with a scythe. There are allusions to religion (Deadly Sin and the Last Temptation), crime (Notorious and Outlaw) and publishing (Life, in white capitals against a red background, and Daily News, along with the old camera logo of that tabloid). There is also a packet stamped with the words “Tango and Cash,” the name attached to a fentanyl-laced brand of heroin that infamously caused 12 fatal overdoses in one weekend in 1991.