King Nyani
April 22, 2024–Ongoing
Arriving on Earth Day, King Nyani has taken up residence at the Bruce Museum. King Nyani (Swahili for gorilla) is a bronze sculpture created by the husband-wife artist team of Gillie and Marc Schattner.
Unlike King Kong and other apes portrayed as villains in popular culture, King Nyani is a gentle giant and reaches out to invite connection.
The artists were inspired to create King Nyani after witnessing the kindness and protective nature of a mountain gorilla silverback in the wild. They sought to inspire a similar sense of awe and familial interconnectedness with the world while raising awareness for the conservation issues that gorillas face. Both species of gorilla, the mountain and eastern lowland, can be found in the tropical forests of equatorial Africa and are considered critically endangered, due to the devastating combined effects of habitat loss, poaching, and disease. Only 1,063 mountain gorillas are estimated to survive, but populations are slowly recovering thanks to vigorous conservation measures.
King Nyani on display at the Bruce is the third in a series of three. The others are at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, and Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.
Gillie (British, b. 1965) and Marc (Australian, b. 1961) Schattner
King Nyani (BIG), 2021, 3 / 3
Bronze
Private Collection
King Nyani Arrives at the Bruce Museum on Earth Day, April 22, 2024.
