80 artists join hands to spread awareness about jumbos

World Elephant Day

Nagpur: WWF India, Rishabh Shroff and Dr Tarana Khubchandani have brought together the country’s leading artists to create artwork in their signature style, honouring the wondrous Asian elephant on World Elephant Day on Thursday.

‘

Little Trunkets

’ will exhibit over 100 artworks, including paintings, sculptures and ceramics, each with its unique individuality. Several well-known artists have conceived and crafted pieces, especially for this topical exhibition.

‘Little Trunkets’ hopes to help address the severe lack of support for elephant conservation in India. As the world’s rarest elephant species, Asian elephants face a range of threats, including habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, poaching and human-elephant conflict.

As a perspective, India’s elephants receive only about a third as much support as African elephants and just a tenth as much as India’s tigers. This unfortunate reality underpins a lack of awareness over the irreplaceability of the charming Asian elephant.

Echoing the sentiments of the artists, Arzan Khambatta, the leading sculptor, said, “Art is a powerful way to create awareness about Asian elephant conservation. The elephant is a playful, beautiful and graceful animal that needs our support.”

As a fundraising exhibit, ‘Little Trunkets’ will support two causes: Practical efforts to boost human-elephant coexistence and a campaign to educate families and harness support for their conservation. Environmental education is an integral part of WWF India’s conservation efforts.

Rishab Shroff, partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and philanthropy ambassador, WWF India, said, “People can support our cause in multiple ways, which is its beauty. Make environmental welfare part of your board’s agenda. Speak to your children about elephants and pique their interest with fun facts. Make your succession plan with either a lifetime gift or legacy donation to this cause. Or just get some lovely art and support ‘Little Trunkets’.”

“We hope this endeavour will raise support for elephant conservation and help people realize what we stand to lose if elephants continue to lose their habitat,” Dr Tarana Khubchandani, director, Art & Soul.

Recent discoveries have demonstrated the richness of elephant lives and how much we will lose if they disappear from our planet. Elephants play a unique role in ecosystems, from creating habitats for smaller species to dispersing the seeds of fruiting trees.

Elephants are not just intelligent, powerful, and empathetic— they have abilities that we can only imagine. They can hear low-frequency infrasound and sense seismic vibrations through their feet; they may sense the onset of tsunamis.

Elephants also have a better sense of smell than dogs. While dogs have 80 genes dedicated to smell and humans have 40, elephants have 200! Elephants also rarely get cancer, apparently producing proteins that help destroy cancerous cells.

Dr Dipankar Ghose, director Wildlife & Habitats, WWF India, said, “WWF India has partnered with Cyril Amarchand and Mangaldas and Gallery Art & Soul for Little Trunkets, an exhibition aimed at raising support for elephant conservation. WWF India works for the conservation of this national heritage animal by promoting human-elephant coexistence, addressing human-elephant conflict, and maintaining the integrity of elephant landscapes.”

Elephant paintings, sculptures

Little Trunkets, an exhibition organized in Mumbai from August 12 to September 12, is a great opportunity for people to collect elephant paintings, sculptures and ceramics. For the young aspirational collector as well as the art connoisseur, it is a rare chance to collect a unique art piece and support an important cause. Some of the participating artists include - Arzan Khambatta, Adil Writer, Ankit Patel, Ajay De, Paresh Maity, Sujata Bajaj, Bina Aziz, Brinda Miller, Heeral Trivedi, Jaya Lamba, Jenny Bhatt, Nabibakhsh Mansoori, Nayanaa Kanodia, Puja Kshatriya, Santanu Hazarika, Shayonti Salvi, Shola Carletti, Shuvaprasanna, Sudip Roy, Suresh Muthukulam, Sushma Jain, Vinita Karim, Shivani Dugar, Vilas Shinde, Jinsook, Revati Sharma Singh, Seema Kohli, Satish Gupta, Subhash Awchat, Vinod Sharma, Yashwant Deshmukh, and Gurcharan Singh.