🔗 Share this article

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound playful, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the possibility to change your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is one of several features in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the community's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the long entrance slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick layers of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression is the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|