Avi

This article reconstructs the double biography of Avi, an Asian elephant, born around 1875 and brought to Europe probably in 1883. “Double” because it will contrast the “medialized” Avi, the star animal of the Barcelona Zoo, founded in 1892 with the corporeal elephant. Avi appeared in numerous newspaper articles, cartoons, drawings, photographs and around seventy postcards showing the elephant and his interactions with the zoo visitors. A large-format broadsheet (auca) told his partially invented biography in forty-eight images. The elephant generated a multitude of heterogeneous images and tropes and thus the complex persona of Avi: orientalizing stereotypes of the Indian subcontinent and the anthropomorphizing construction of his character as wise and justice-loving, friend of children and respected citizen of Barcelona. Due to his popularity, he was appropriated as a point of reference in the political debates of Barcelona and became a prism of the enormous social tensions around 1900. At the same this article tries to reconstruct real-life experiences of Avi’s twenty-two years of captivity in the Barcelona Zoo. To reconstruct the (seemingly inaccessible) experiences of a long-dead animal represents an enormous methodological challenge that requires a constant reflection on the limitations of this approach. Reading the wealth of sources against the grain, it seems possible to identify some “reality fragments” and to show how Avi resisted or adapted to his situation in peculiar ways. Furthermore, zoo biologists, ethologists and elephant keepers have been consulted in order to apply their knowledge and sensibilities to the material, including Avi’s preserved skeleton.