Portrait 02 · The resident herd

Muniya

Identity confirmed by certificate

Role: Matriarch
Say it: MOO-nee-yah
Meaning: Small bird

A matriarch whose name means “small bird,” anchoring a family shaped by memory and care.

Begin the story

MUNIYA · PORTRAIT 02
THE RESIDENT HERD

An elephant is a person

The center of a family.

Muniya is a real wild elephant, known as an individual in the Nilgiri landscape and translated into sculptural form by the people who share that landscape.

Muniya is identified in the family records as the matriarch. Elephant families are led by experienced females whose knowledge helps guide mothers, daughters, sisters, and calves through changing landscapes.

Her name means “small bird.” The supplied certificate confirms her identity and role; her individual field history has not yet been included in the archive. This page will grow when those observations arrive.

Letters from the Nilgiris

A friendship,
carried across continents.

“We elephants have names for each other too.”

— Padiri, writing to Janet Ayers for the herd

Janet Ayers, who owns and cares for the four sculptures, received a series of letters inviting her to know each elephant as an individual, not an emblem. They also record a 5,000-mile migration that raised more than $5 million for coexistence projects and supports long-term, well-paid work for more than 300 Indigenous artisans.

Selected archival pages are shown here. A page containing a private mailing address has intentionally been omitted.

Handwritten letter from Padiri, signed for Muniya, Prishti, and Uma too

PADIRI’S LETTER · TAP TO READ

Closing letter from the Great Elephant Migration and the Real Elephant Collective

THE GREAT ELEPHANT MIGRATION · ARCHIVE

The archive · portrait 02

Certificate
of Authenticity.

This original record pairs the sculpture with Muniya, a real matriarch of the Nilgiri Hills, and documents the Adivasi communities and lantana material behind the work.

View the full certificate ↗

ARCHIVAL REFERENCE · TAP TO ENLARGE

Real counterpart

Every sculpture begins with an elephant observed in the wild, never an anonymous archetype.

Indigenous makers

Soliga, Bettakurumba, Kattunayakan, and Paniya artisans bring lived knowledge of elephants to every form.

Restorative material

Lantana camara is removed from forest habitat and transformed into an intricate, life-size work.

LANTANA

The material

A weed becomes a messenger.

Lantana camara is an invasive plant that can outcompete native vegetation and diminish wildlife habitat. In the hands of the Coexistence Collective, its woody stems become skin, gesture, weight, and memory.

The making supports skilled livelihoods while the removal of lantana helps open space in the forest—a material expression of coexistence rather than a decoration about it.

The invitation

“Humans are not separate from nature, but woven into it.”

The herd asks a practical and generous question: how might we make room for wild lives wherever we are?