Elephants are parading through New York City. Well, a herd of sculptural elephants that is. In what some are calling the biggest outdoor public art intervention to hit New York since Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005, The Great Elephant Migration consists of 100 life-sized artworks meticulously crafted by 200 Indigenous artists over the past five years.
The touring exhibition is produced by South India’s Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR) and is on view in the Meatpacking District till next month. British animal rights activist Ruth Ganesh co-founded NBR with Indian elephant researcher Tarsh Thekaekara to solve two problems at once: firstly, utilize an invasive weed called lantana camara, which has threatened a number of ecosystems across India; while simultaneously raising funds for larger global issues threatening the world’s natural habitats. NBR has raised $1m USD thus far, which will go on to benefit a number of wildlife conservation groups, such as the WWF and New York’s Wild Bird Fund.
Each sculpture is available to purchase for roughly $8,000 USD to $22,000 USD and is based off a real elephant that Thekaekara’s wife builds over a several month span. “The vision of 100 hand-made Indian elephants migrating across America in my mind, is a monumental, cinematic and moving work of performance art,” said curator Dodie Kazanjian, in a statement. “I see these elephant sculptures descending from the superb 16th-to-18th-century royal elephant portrait paintings, where every elephant had its own name.”
Having touched down in Rhode Island this past July, next stop on the elephant trail is Art Basel Miami Beach, where they will then depart northwest to Montana and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, along with Los Angeles and their final stop in Houston. The Great Elephant Migration will be on view in New York until October 20, 2024.
